Cover

Half-title

Title page

Copyright information

Table of contents

Preface

List of abbreviations

Introduction

Notes

1 Women of lost honour: honour and dishonour

Prostitutes and harlots

Common prostitutes: the vocabulary

Free women

Lovers and concubines

Rural prostitution

Courtesans

Numbers

Conclusion

Notes

2 Prostitution, sin and the law

‘The lesser evil’

‘Fortresses of lust’

Encounters with magistrates

Sodomy: a greater evil?

Conclusion

Notes

3 Prostitutes, courtesans and public morality

The restraint of the courtesan

‘A detestable vice which creeps like a cancer’

Prostitution and the French evil

Prostitution: a defence against adultery?

‘An occupation which has always had to be tolerated’

Dues and taxes

Conclusion

Notes

4 Extenuation and rescue

Children in danger

The unfit mother

Fathers and husbands

‘The prowling lion’

False lovers and rapists

Poverty, prostitution and female employment

Conclusion

Notes

5 Penitent sinners

Penitent saints

Redemptive marriages

Magdalen convents

Missionary methods

The regime

Entrants and financial problems

Conclusion

Notes

6 Women and girls in danger

Halfway houses

Malmaritate

The rescue of innocents

Compromise and refinement

Regime and curriculum

Leaving the Conservatory

Conclusion

Notes

7 Foundlings and orphans: an introduction

Foundling hospitals as a lesser evil

The vocabulary: foundlings and orphans

The spread of foundling homes

Organisation and revenue

Eighteenth-century reforms

Conclusion

Notes

8 Natural and spurious infants: abandonment and other choices

Types of illegitimacy

To keep or to abandon

Child murders and secret births

Maternity homes and hospitals

Abandonment and infanticide: two stories

Children of wedlock

Conclusion

Notes

9 Abandonment, reception and infant mortality

Arrival

Great numbers and arduous journeys

Baptisms and tokens

The ordeal of the nursery

Infant mortality

Conclusion

Notes

10 Fostering and adoption

Nurses in town and country

Inspection and fraud

Restoration and adoption

Conclusion

Notes

11 Foundlings and society

‘Scholars or artificers’

Domestic service

Female conservatories

Music and austerity

Marriage and spinsterhood

Oppression and protest

Innocents and outcasts

Conclusion

Notes

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index