Dr. Barbara Tchaikovsky, who has for weeks been trying to secure definite information as to the approximate number of illegitimate births likely to occur owing to the establishment of military camps all over the country, told a representative of the “Manchester Guardian” that it was practically impossible to form any estimate. She hears that in one county town the authorities have taken a house to establish a maternity home; that in two or three others the guardians are building additional wings to the workhouse expressly for these mothers, and that a woman patrol in a south coast town quotes 400 as the number of prospective mothers.



The reply from Birmingham is that there is no information. Her informant in Glasgow writes “Big figures are quoted, though there is no definite information, but no one can doubt that soldiers’ children are to be numerous.” Mr. W. Astor, M.P. for Plymouth, which has been quoted as a centre of the trouble, wrote that “while one hears of many cases it is impossible to obtain figures.” “I am told,” wrote a Scotswoman, “that in Scottish town with a population of 9,000 there are 200 cases, but this can hardly be believed.”

It is said that the number of illegitimate births per annum is 36,000. “One must remember,” said Dr. Tchaikovsky, “that a very large proportion of the 36,000 fathers who were civilians at the beginning of 1914 are now soldiers, and that consequently, even if there were not the great increase in illegitimacy which is talked of, a very large proportion of the illegitimate children must be the children of soldiers.”

Not a Working Class Trouble Only

Discussing the problem of the war babies, Mrs Arnold Glover, secretary of the National Union of Girls’ Clubs, said she thought the extent of the evil had probably been very much exaggerated, but she had no doubt that there would be a great increase of illegitimacy and that a large proportion of the mothers would be very young girls. Few of them would be club girls, for it was, generally speaking, the unattached girl with few interests in her life who succumbed to temptation. The girls’ clubs had probably been a tremendous safeguard, as even the emergency clubs near the camps were proving. They gave their members a great deal to think about and encouraged a spirit of esprit de corps, while the club leaders kept so closely in touch with each girl that they must be aware of any tragedy.

Mrs. Glover said she deprecated the idea that the trouble was a purely working class one. Tho temptation was one to which undoubtedly women of all classes had been subjected. The working-class woman came into prominence simply through the problem of affording her financial support. The general feeling among women who were anxious to help, as evidenced at the conference on Thursday, was that it would be quite impossible to discriminate between the children of soldiers and civilians.

Women packing steel helmets to be shipped to western front, Easter 1916. Photograph: Alamy

The whole question of illegitimacy must be reviewed and she hoped the fault would be that suitable provision, would be made for the mother, not only in special lying-in hospitals, to which only first cases would be admitted, but in providing suitable paid employment before and after the _child’s birth. Many of the girls were now going through a time of intense unhappiness and financial stress. They would not return to their old employment, but hid themselves away and suffered as much from the dreariness as the profitlessness of their leisure. She would like to see open-air employment provided – light farm work or poultry rearing, – giving the girls an open-air life, healthy, natural surroundings, and an opportunity to care for their babies. In these circumstances they could learn to love their babies, whereas otherwise the obvious danger was that they would regard them with horror.