ABSTRACT
Through an analysis of press discourse in the decade leading up to the legislative changes of 1834 this chapter provides the political and social context for the introduction of the New Poor Law and its Bastardy Clause which had such a disastrous impact on the lives of unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children. It analyses court reports, coronial inquiries, law and police reports, editorials, political reports and letters published in the correspondence pages of the London Times to understand how in this period English society came to understand the fallen woman, illegitimacy and infanticide. Gail Reekie argues that the illegitimate child and the unmarried mother are particular social identities or subjectivities extruded as part of the cultural process of making and maintaining the illegitimate birth category. Infanticide reports also acted as ideological texts by speaking directly to household mistresses whose role it was to manage and control the morality of female servants as well as their domestic labour.
