"the Black Lamb of the Black Sheep": Illegitimacy in the English Working Class, 1850-1939‪.‬

The plight of illegitimate children was a well-known trope in Victorian fiction, and a concern to reformers of marriage law as well as those who worked for children's rights. England's bastardy laws were the harshest of Europe. An illegitimate child was literally parentless at law, and even the subsequent marriage of the parents could not legitimize their offspring. Wilkie Collins, who fathered three illegitimate children, castigated English law about this point in No Name, through his character Mr. Pendril: Though the illegitimacy laws had many conservative defenders, even those who championed English practice admitted that the sanctions were meant to punish the parents through their children, a morally dubious action; furthermore, the laws meant that England had many children existing in a legal limbo. As a result, the issue never entirely disappeared from public discourse, though the law of illegitimacy did not see any change until 1926--and even then the reforms were mild. Through the late Victorian period to World War II and even beyond, bastardy was a serious stigma legally, socially, and emotionally.