Maternity

I wonder if anyone predicted to master mariner's wife Mary Harries that her thirteenth childbed might be an unlucky one. Aged 41, she had already given birth a dozen times. Assuming she first became a mother in her teens she'd at least averaged a baby every 2 years, and, even if some of those may have been stillborn or short-lived, she must have fallen pregnant again every time she ceased breastfeeding. By 1834 her older offspring would be earning a living of sorts, the girls maybe as scullery maids in the castle seen above, the boys perhaps at sea with their father. But she must have always had a fleet of younger children to look after and feed, a fire to stoke, water to boil, clothes and napkins to wash, while her sailor husband Thomas was away on his ship for weeks or months on end.

How can we even begin to imagine what Mary's life was like?
I really can't, but after her gravestone in Newport (Pembs) churchyard caught my attention, I went home and pulled out a book I've had for many years. Maternity: Letters from Working Women was first published in 1915 by Margaret Llewelyn Davies. Born 20 years after Mary Harries died, and into a different class and country, she was a remarkable woman in her own right. After a topnotch education she became a sanitary inspector in London and got involved with the Women's Co-operative Guild, eventually becoming its general secretary. This was a campaigning organization that championed, peacefully, demands for women's suffrage, improved obstetric and perinatal care, and the introduction of a maternity benefit that would be payable to mothers themselves. The letters she published were written to the Guild by women who had never before described their experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and childcare, often with husbands who were irresponsible, violent or incapable of earning a living wage. There was no way of preventing conception apart from abstinence or taking noxious substances that might precipitate an abortion. Doctors, if they could be afforded, were often incompetent and women sometimes suffered from the neglected consequences of a difficult birth for years after. Poverty and the fear of destitution was ever present and if a husband died or absconded the workhouse beckoned.
You can read some of the women's letters here but I must warn you they are very harrowing.

I don't know any more about Mary Harries, or how many of her children survived. Her husband Thomas lived another 20 years after his wife's death so it is to be hoped that the home remained intact with his support.