Well, ummm .... back in the 1810s, in NSW, the newly appointed governor, Lachlan Macquarie, issued some General Orders ..... if anyone is interested, RCHATS search engine for "criminal intercourse" may well return threads where I have posted live links to the then Government Gazettes with the Orders and the lengthy explanations as to why they were issued.
"Criminal conversation" was a term for adultery in England in 18th century.
One of my ancestors was pregnant 3 times without being married, during the first half of the 1860's, the first baby born when she was 18. It was at the time of the Lancashire Cotton Famine. An estimated quarter of the population of her town were receiving Poor Relief. I have suspicions about reasons for the pregnancies, some not pleasant. The man she eventually married when she was 27 wasn't the father of her children. Some unemployed cotton operatives turned to prostitution during the Cotton Famine.
My ancestor seemed to be following family tradition. Her eldest aunt had 3 pregnancies as a "Singlewoman" from her late teens to mid-20s, only surviving child was brought up by grandparents.
