The Poor Law of 1576 formed the basis of English bastardy laws. Its purpose was to punish a bastard child's mother and putative father, and to relieve the parish from the cost of supporting the child.

The poor, unlike the rich, sometimes ended up in prison for having children out of wedlock – with babies ending up in houses of correction alongside their mothers to avoid the parish having to pay for a wet or dry nurse. 

Children born outside of marriage were around twice as likely to die as those born to married parents –a trend that continued until at least the early 20th century.

Unwed women and their children were the casualties of a metropolitan sexual culture and a frequently unsympathetic welfare system. They faced very significant difficulties in their pregnancies, during childbirth and in raising their children, not least in the difficulties many women encountered in terms of gaining financial support from the fathers of their children.

Oliver Twist and his mother are a great example of this. Except his mother did not have to face the consequences after giving birth out of wedlock, Oliver did. Although she probably did have to face the consequences before she gave birth, even though we did not experience her humiliation. 

Work Cited

Supporting London's Bastard Children. 26 July 2018, www.cam.ac.uk/unmarried_mothers.