The concealment of unwanted births
and the dire consequences

The social stigma of giving birth out of wedlock in past times was so unbearable that many girls took drastic steps to hide their pregnancy. 

Concealment is a term which refers to hiding the birth of a child from friends or family but is most often used when the appropriate authorities have not been informed about a stillbirth or the death of a newborn. This is a crime in many countries, with varying punishments, prevalent in Victorian England and one that persists today. 

During the 19th century, murder was not unknown but the more usual practice if the baby was stillborn was an attempt to conceal the birth even though such action was inevitably doomed to failure and also risked prosecution under the Offences against the Person Act of 1861 which made it a crime “whether such child died before, at, or after its birth” and on conviction was punishable by a maximum of two years imprisonment with or without hard labour. 

Young girls had the added handicap of little knowledge about sexual matters or even to realise that they were pregnant and if they did, how to take care of themselves and their unborn child. Cases of concealing births were therefore widespread and the court had to decide on the evidence whether the infant had been stillborn or deliberately killed, or in the legal parlance of the time, “whether it had a separate existence” after birth in which case the defendant could face a charge of murder for which the punishment was death by hanging. 

But even if the baby had been born dead, many girls were severely punished as a result, such as Sarah Leeson, aged 20, of Edenham, near Bourne, who was sent for trial at Lincoln Crown Court in March 1850 after pleading guilty to hiding her illegitimate baby girl in a pond and was sent to jail for a month. Two other similar cases were heard by the court at the same time against Ann Jinks, aged 25, of Gainsborough, who secretly buried her dead baby in the countryside, and Mary Andrews, aged 40, of Newton-on-Trent, who secreted hers in a wood. Both were also sentenced to one month’s imprisonment. 

Many similar cases are recorded here in Bourne, notably in 1902 involving a 21-year-old domestic servant girl named Martha Fish, and her plight is a stark reminder of what others in similar situations suffered. She was working at the Bull Inn in the market place (pictured above), now the Burghley Arms, when she became pregnant but no one appeared to notice her condition and one morning in late December, the day before Christmas Eve, she went to her room saying that she felt unwell.  

Martha stayed there until 5 pm when she came downstairs and resumed her duties in the public house, mainly waiting in the taproom until shortly before midnight and for the next few days went about her work as usual, saying that she felt much better. But a few days later, she told her employer, the wife of landlord George Hodson, that if she came upstairs she would show her the cause of her feeling unwell and produced a cardboard box from under the bed containing the body of a newly-born female child which she said was hers. 

An inquest into the death heard medical evidence from Dr John Gilpin who told the coroner that a post mortem had revealed that the child was prematurely born and badly nourished. “The baby had breathed”, he said, “and with proper attention at birth it might have lived. But I cannot say whether it had a separate existence.” 

Martha Fish was subsequently charged with the concealment of a birth and appeared before magistrates at the Town Hall when she was remanded on bail for trial at Lincolnshire Assizes where the case was heard on 19th February 1903 before Mr Justice Kennedy who before the hearing began told the grand jury: “I call your attention to the fact that the calendar contains no less than three charges of concealment of birth. While we naturally sympathise with poor women who are left in circumstances which they dare not face, they must treat concealment of birth with some gravity because, apart from the immoral aspect of the question, there is the danger of fostering an inattention on the part of mothers which is inhuman, and of some act being committed bordering very near on the prevention of life.” 

In the event, Martha Fish won the sympathy of the grand jury and the case was dismissed, thus avoiding the severe punishment which could have been handed out had she been found guilty. 

Concealment was the desperate act of a young girl who needed help at a time when the man responsible had deserted her. Such a situation led to many mothers disposing of their stillborn babies in rivers, the countryside and elsewhere but those with Christian beliefs preferred consecrated ground and as a consequence there were several cases of unauthorised burials in churchyards and cemeteries. 

Forty years earlier, a sad discovery was made at the town cemetery in South Road where the body of an infant child had been buried without the knowledge of the authorities. On the morning of Wednesday 19th February 1862, the parish clerk, Simon Benstead, who lived at the cemetery lodge [now demolished] and also kept the grounds in good order, was planting flowers on the newly made grave of a girl who had died a few weeks before when his spade struck a small wooden box with the lid secured by a cord. 

Investigation revealed that it contained the body of a female child wrapped in flannel, apparently part of an old petticoat, and a post mortem subsequently established that baby had been stillborn and buried for two to three weeks. The case was then handed over to the police for investigation but despite extensive inquiries over the following months, the mother was never found. 

Today, we have a more tolerant society in which vulnerable girls who need help have the support of their families and friends while the National Health Service, the social and welfare services and many voluntary organisations, are always on hand to provide moral and practical assistance to prevent a recurrence of those events from this dark period of our history.