This book explores the legal and social consequences of growing up illegitimate in England and Wales between 1860 and 1930, a crucial transition period between Victorian respectability and Social Darwinism and the modern era of tolerance. By taking the child's point of view, rather than the mother's or the larger society's, this book offers new insights in childhood studies, social and family history, and the law. England had the harshest illegitimacy laws in Europe; a child of unwed parents was filis nullius, no one's child, and even the subsequent marriage of the parents did not legitimate...