Where would an unmarried mother go to give birth to her child in 1932? 'work

Question:East Durham area- looking for ancestors, rattling those skeletons.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: East Durham area- looking for ancestors, rattling those skeletons.

Have a look on this site, it's my favourite just type in East Durham in the search bar on the left hand side and be transported back to the workhouse, there are list's of inmates and loads more to look at. If you need any more help I have quite a few more like that. More often than not if the girl/ lady was unmarried she would be sent to the workhouse.
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~peter/workhouse/
When the local authority that run the workhouse as such, closed the workhouses down, it was quite normal for the buildings to be run as hospitals although there were still some workhouses in operation towards the 1940's
http://www.lincolnshirelife.co.uk/pages/...
You could ask at the library in East Durham they will more than likely be able to give you the exact year that particular one closed.

Hope it helps.

Most births were at home in the 30's and prior. There was not much that could be done differently at the hospitals. Most people went to the hospitals to die in those times.

This is about the rural (farm) Virginia and North Carolina areas which I am familiar, but would assume it holds for most areas.

First the "unmarried" aspect was not uncommon and really didn't carry the huge stigma it does in some places today. It regularly happened that a young woman would become pregnant, even know the young father - usually a neighbor. But childrearing was truly the mother's responsibility (and the mother's family if the woman was unwed). Sometimes the parents would ultimately marry (more often than not, just considered themselves married through "common law"), though most times the woman would actually end up marrying a different man. But an unwed young mother would live in HER parent's household. Looking at the census pages, you see a lot of family entries that have a very young child with a different surname even though all older "daughters" are identified as single. Just the way it was then.

As far as the actual births went, this was almost exclusively a home event. Sometimes done at a female relative's or neighbor's house if the mother of the woman having the baby was no longer living. There were no hospitals! And even doctors were rare, often a single doctor for a very large area. And they would travel - one would "go fetch the doc" as opposed to working out of an office. Midwives (usually a mother or female relative) was the attendant. The unfortunate consequence of this was that infant mortality rates were very high (my grandmother was one of 12 children of which only 5 survived the first year of life) and childbirth was often adverse to the mother's health, with death at childbirth more common than you would think. But infant mortality rates were very high. In fact, it was such a common, but sad, fact that first born males were often not named until their first birthday (if the parents wanted to pass on the father's name) just to make sure they had a good chance of survival before "wasting" the name. And in the 1900 and 1910 census, there were actually entries for "Number of children born to the woman" and "Number of children still alive". It was honestly a way of life, sad, very sad, but not the devastating event it would be today because it was just a way of life.

So married or unmarried, birth would normally be done at a home with a female relative or neighbor serving as a midwife.

I don't think there were workhouses in 1932!
There were mother and baby homes and I would suggest you contact Durham FHS and Durham County Archives for local info.

As well as the Mother & Baby Homes already mentioned, an "errant" girl might have been sent to family in another part of the Country.
Part of my Mother's family were from North Devon and I have found a couple of Births to unmarried mothers from that family, registered at the home of a cousin in Bristol. She is described on the Census as "a hospital nurse" so may have also been seen as the local midwife.

mothers would be sent away, maybe to family or to places set aside for them.

If you find a unmarried Mother then check the birth index's pull a certificate and find out where they were born.