I do not know that my experience of child-bearing has differed much
from the women of my class. I was a factory girl, and an only child. I
was married at twenty, and the mother of three children by the time I
was twenty-three. I was totally ignorant of the needs of my children or
how to look after myself as I should do, and now I look back, I wonder
how I muddled through, for that is really what it was, a muddle all the
time, and it was more by fortune than wit that I have reared my first
two children to maturity.
When I look back to that first three years of my married life, I wonder
how I lived through it. I was weak and ill, could not suckle my second
baby. And then a third baby coming along made my life a continual
drudgery, and to crown my misfortune my husband fell out of work, and
I had to do shirt work at home in order to keep a roof over our heads.
My third baby was very tiny and thin when born. I put this down to the
worry and the shortness of food which I had to put up with, and though
he lived till he was three years old and died from diphtheria. It was a
happy release to me, as he was an epileptic, and I thanked God, much as
I loved him, that he was taken from this life, where even sound people
have a difficulty to exist.
I do not think I was very different in my pregnancies to others. I
always prepared myself to die, and I think this awful depression
is common to most at this time. And when bothered by several other
children, and not knowing how to make ends meet, death in some cases
would be welcome if it were not the dread of the children. “How would
they get on without their mother?”
My husband was fortunate enough, just after the loss of my third child,
to get regular work, and I never bore another child under such awful
conditions. But I believe that I felt the effects of it in all my other
pregnancies.
After the first three living children, I had three still-born children.
I was six months advanced when I fell downstairs over a stair-rod,
which killed the child, which was born after forty-eight hours’ labour,
and perhaps it seems wicked to you, but I was glad, because it left my
hands free for a time to look after the other two, for I was fearfully
weak and ill. After a lapse of two years I had another seven-months
baby born dead, and again, after another two years, a five-months
still-born child, all three still-born children being boys. I had a
miscarriage after this of two months, and when I was thirty-five years
old had my last baby, who is now living, nine years old.
I do hope you will not feel that this letter is morbid, and that I
delight in writing horrors, for I do not, and had you not asked for
information I should never have written this all down. It is strictly
true, and when I look back to my early married life I could cry for the
girl who endured so much for life that was wasted. I am fairly healthy
now myself and have much to thank God for--a loving helpmeet and
dutiful children--so please do not think I am miserable, for I am not,
for I believe--in fact, I know--that there is a brighter day dawning
for the mother and child of the future.
_Wages 21s. to 30s.; four children, three still-births, one
miscarriage._