Introduction

Single mothers have always needed extra help. They are more likely to be poor than most people. It is hard to raise children alone.

Today, a woman can make choices about becoming a mother. Some of these choices are hard, especially for unmarried women. But at least there are choices. If an unmarried woman is unhappy about being pregnant, she can think about having an abortion, or giving her child up for adoption. If she decides to become a single mother, she can get some help from the government. If she has a job, she can put her child in daycare or find a baby sitter.

None of these choices were possible 100 years ago. What did women do then? Some of their choices were not happy ones. These women sometimes broke the law and ended up in court. We can find out quite a lot about single mothers in the past by looking at letters and court records in the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador and in old newspapers.

Today, if a woman is unable to care for her children, she can give them up for adoption or put them in foster care. There was no such thing as legal adoption in the past. In fact, the first adoption laws were not passed in Newfoundland until 1940. Before that, a doctor, a judge, a minister or priest would sometimes arrange an adoption for an unmarried mother.¹ Babies were not usually adopted by strangers though. Of course, many single mothers gave their babies to other family members-their mothers or aunts in most cases. These relatives would look after the child, sometimes until it was grown, sometimes until the mother could care for the child herself.

Unmarried mothers had few places to go 100 years ago. If a woman was working and she became pregnant, she could lose her job. Many women were servants. They lived in the homes where they worked. People did not want women with babies working in their houses. A servant who became pregnant would lose her place to live when she lost her job. Then, she was homeless.