Attitudes Towards Single Mothers

To understand why life was so hard for pregnant women who were not married, it is useful to know how people felt about these women in the past. We can find out by looking at letters people wrote to newspapers.

In 1919, some doctors in St. John's began to raise money to build a maternity hospital—a place where women could go to have babies. At that time, almost all women in Newfoundland gave birth in their own homes. The Cook Street Rescue Home was the only place where doctors and nurses delivered babies and looked after women outside their own homes. People knew that women in other parts of the world were beginning to go to hospitals to give birth. Some thought that women in Newfoundland should have this choice as well.

The maternity hospital these doctors wanted to build was going to be run by the Salvation Army, just like the Cook Street Rescue Home. In fact, this maternity hospital later became the Grace General Hospital. The doctors wanted a home for unmarried mothers in the same building. But the idea of putting married and unmarried mothers in the same place really upset some people, even though the unmarried mothers would be in a different part of the building. Many letters were written about this to the St. John's Daily News in March of 1919.

One person, who did not sign his name to his letter, said,

...to link together a Rescue Home and Maternity Hospital is decidedly objectionable under any arrangement... True wives and expectant mothers should abhor the idea and should not be asked to reside anywhere in the atmosphere of the fallen.⁵

"Abhor" means to hate. "The fallen" means fallen women. This was a name for unwed mothers. Prostitutes were also called fallen women. Fallen women were thought to be sinful or bad.