The Legal Agency of Single Mothers: Lawsuits over Illegitimate Children and the Uses of Legal Aid to the Poor in the Dutch Town of Leiden (1750–1810)

The history of illegitimacy has evolved since the 1970’s from pessimistic assessments that perceived single motherhood as a form of deviance among impoverished and mobile sections of the population, to recent optimistic assessments that stress the agency of single mothers, their relative local belonging and the leniency of local governments towards them. Based on a case study on illegitimacy in the eighteenth-century Dutch city of Leiden, this article argues that veracity is to be found in both readings of the fates of single mothers. A comparative analysis of single mothers who took legal recourse in paternity matters and those who did not, shows how only a limited part of single mothers exercised legal agency. The litigating mothers shared certain characteristics: they often came from families who were beneficiaries of poor relief, they baptized their children in the Dutch reformed churches and more often than not their own father was still alive. The article hypothesizes that the consistory and overseers of the poor actively encouraged legal action. The case study evidences that the barriers for single mothers to use these judicial means were considerable. These obstacles were not financial in nature, but rather related to the women’s social and cultural distance from the elites who staffed the local law courts.