Address upon illegitimacy to the working men of Scotland / by John M. Strachan.

  • Strachan, John M.
Date:
[between 1870 and 1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address upon illegitimacy to the working men of Scotland / by John M. Strachan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    o O except farmers, as I am sorry to say that, in this matter, they must he ranked with the working class. But, with this exception, I never knew an illegitimate child whose mother was not the daughter of a working man, and I cannot recollect of a single instance, except in the working class, where a child was born within live or six months after wedlock. Some may be inclined to explain this by saying that the wealthier class have better opportunites of concealing the crime by going from home to be confined. But I am convinced that this is not the explanation. Intimate as I neces¬ sarily am with my patients, such a thing could scarcely happen without my being cognisant of it, or, at least, suspecting it. I do not mean to say that it never does occur. The late painful and notorious case of Madeleine Smith shows that immorality is to be found in all classes; still, except in the work¬ ing class, it is very rare indeed. Take an example from the locality with which I am best acquainted. I have looked over the registers of Dollar from the commencement of the new system, and I find that, in three-years, there have been nineteen illegitimate births, in every one of them the mothers were working men’s daughters. During the same period there were ten marriages of persons who continue to reside in Dollar. In five of these a child was born within five or six months of the marriage. All of these five were working men. How, my friends, I do not bring forward this fact merely as a piece of speculation, or for the purpose of irritating or of humbling us, but for the purpose of asking if this stigma must continue. Is there any reason why working men should continue to suffer the domestic misery, that, in every case, results from the fall of their daughters from virtue? If the other classes of the community are comparatively exempt from this misery, is it absolutely necessary that one class should continue to bear it? In all classes the human passions are the same, and in all, human weakness is the same. Why is it then, that the fall from virtue should so peculiarly belong to one class of society? I cannot doubt but that every one of you must be as deeply interested in this subject as I am. Ho father of a family can consider with indifference this dreadful evil, which may some day con¬ vert his purest pleasure and greatest pride into his greatest misery and deepest humiliation. Ho young man can think on it lightly. Looking forward to marriage, it must be his desire that his wife should be pure and chaste, worthy of his respect, and fit to train his children. But let us not be content with talking over and bewailing this evil. Dan nothing be done to remedy it? A question that always forces itself on the consideration of a physician is, whether the disease he is called upon to treat be curable or not? If he thinks it is, he sets himself earnestly to the work. Is, then, this evil that we have been considering capable of cure. I unhesitatingly answer, Yes. I do not mean that any efforts of ours will put an end to sin, but it is in your power, by the blessing of God, if you will only give yourselves to the work with earnestness of purpose, to render this sin as rare among yourselves as it is among the middle or upper classes. I will not believe that there is anything in honest labour, I will not believe that there is anything in poverty, which necessarily entails impurity on our females. And I would call upon you, from the respect in which you ought to hold the class to which you belong, to rise up and rescue it from this reproach.
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