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A Methodist minister named T. B. Darby, wrote:
We must do our best for the unfortunate victims of men's lust until
such time as we can make these men share the shame which their victims
suffer, but we must not, dare not, throw around this unfortunate Institution
any mantle of honor and this is done when we couple it with a Home where
true wives who are expectant mothers seek help in a trying time. I venture
to say that the very idea is repugnant to a very large majority of the
mothers in this city. For their sakes, for the sake of common morality,
we cannot afford to do this thing...6
Concealment and Infanticide
These unkind attitudes made life hard for unmarried mothers. Some
women were so ashamed and afraid that they tried to hide their pregnancies
as long as possible. It may be hard to believe that anyone could keep
a pregnancy secret for nine months while such big changes happened to
her body. But we know this did happen. Some women gave birth in secret
if they could. If the child died at birth or shortly after, the mother
could hide the baby's body. She might even cause the baby's death. The
legal terms for these acts are "concealment of birth" and
"infanticide."
Babies who are born without medical help sometimes die, especially
if the baby is premature, or if the mother has not seen a doctor and
if she worked hard all through her pregnancy.7 Young women who gave
birth in secret almost always said that the baby had died in birth or
shortly after. If there were no marks on the body to show that the baby
had been killed, it was very hard to know if the mother caused the death.
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