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The New Poor Law
The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act
The 'Bastardy Clause'
One of the most controversial parts of the Act was the 'Bastardy Clause' (actually a sequence of several clauses) which made the obtaining of affiliation orders much more difficult and expensive than had formerly been the case. Previously, such orders were obtained through local Petty Sessions courts but after 1834 had to be heard at county Quarter Sessions and could only be initiated by Overseers or Guardians. Evidence of paternity claims now also had to be "corroborated in some material particular", something that was often impossible to achieve. The Act effectively made illegitimate children the sole responsibility of their mothers until they were 16 years old. If mothers of such children were unable to support themselves and their offspring, they would have to enter the workhouse. The 1834 Act, it was hoped, would make the consequences sufficiently unattractive to deter women from risking extra-marital pregnancy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a highly unpopular and contentious measure and was diluted in 1839 by an Act (2&3 Vic. c.85.) which allowed affiliation claims to again be heard by local magistrates at Petty Sessions. The clause was effectively overturned by a further Act in 1844 (7&8 Vic. c.101) which enabled an unmarried mother to apply for an affiliation order against the father for maintenance of the mother and child, regardless of whether she was in receipt of poor relief.
One other important change relating to bastardy in the 1834 Act was that an illegitimate child now took its mother's settlement until it reached the age of sixteen or acquired settlement in its own right. The previous system, where such a child gained settlement from its place of birth, had sometimes led parishes to try and remove from within their borders heavily pregnant single women so that their children would not be a burden on the ratepayers.
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