W2B-004 Local history-1.txt
A STORY FROM THE PAST...
THE following is an extract from 'Belfast Women - Past and Present', compiled by Jill McKenna, which was one of the five booklets produced in the initial phase of the NICEA project:
One of the saddest aspects of "the old days" was the treatment meted out to unmarried girls who became pregnant.

They were condemned by society and seen as a disgrace to their families. Sometimes they were forced into hastily-arranged marriages, and sometimes they were thrown out into the streets to fend for themselves. If they weren't, they were sent away to homes for unmarried mothers or "fallen women", where they were made to work hard till their babies were born as a punishment for getting pregnant. Some had their babies in the workhouse. The babies were almost always adopted, often without the mother's consent.

If they were lucky, other members of the family were prepared to help them. A widow in her eighties remembered what happened when her cousin, who came from the country, became pregnant.

"When I was fourteen, my mother told me one Saturday that I had to go out the road in a side-car and meet my aunt and cousin."

"My cousin would have her case with her and she was to come back home with me. She didn't give me any reason, but unless you were told you didn«t ask questions. So I did what she said and brought my cousin back and my mother put a single bed in the parlour and put her in there."

He mother, a widow, took in lodgers to make ends meet.

"When the men were at work, my cousin had the run of the house, but before they came in at five o'clock she had to go into the parlour and stay there. I didn't know why she was kept in there."

"Then one morning about five o'clock I woke up and heard a child crying. I slipped downstairs and I could hear a child crying in our parlour. I didn't know what was going on, but I crept back upstairs, because if my mother had caught me down there she 'd have hit me!"

Unmarried mothers are now a thing of the past. Nowadays they are called single parents, reflecting the more sympathetic and tolerant view of society in general towards unmarried girls who become pregnant.

Some things at least have changed for the better since a terrified girl was smuggled to the city in a side-car to escape her fathers'wrath.
