ABSTRACT
A study of the life histories of the women involved may help to answer these and other questions, if only to a limited degree. For these women, making up three-quarters of all those who stayed on in the parish without marrying, the family provided shelter, though whether with a good heart or grudgingly it is impossible to say. The fate of the women whose parents had died in the period between the censuses depended largely on their economic status. However, two further pieces of evidence dispel any idea that most unmarried mothers went on to follow the normal marriage pattern of other women in Colyton and were in no way handicapped in the marriage market. Single women, like married women, were given outdoor relief if they or their children fell ill; they received the same relief at childbirth and were provided with coffins if their children died.
