This act incorporates the Orphans Home and Female Aid Society, which is established to help pregnant women without families, and to offer them religious instruction.
This act amends a 1792 act relating to bastardry to allow overseers of the poor or commissioners of alms houses to seek compensation for certain damages before local courts.
An act to incorporate the Ladies of the Committee of Management of the Montreal Lying-in Hospital, who managed a hospital for impoverished women and their children.
An Act to incorporate "The Montreal Asylum for Aged and Infirm Women" who provide aid and care for destitute aged, infirm,and decrepit women in the city. The act also outlines how the corporation will run and exempts the women involved from needing their husbands' permission to make decisions.
This act provides financial protection for the child of an unwed mother in the case of a "seduction," that is to say, in the case of a man having pre-marital sex with a young woman after having promised to marry her but without actually intending to do so.
This act allows women who should become pregnant out of wedlock to sue the fathers of those babies for support. The act specifies that the men will only be except of this charge if the woman in question dies or gets married before the baby is born, or if she miscarries. The court also reserves the right to place the child in alternate care. If the woman is of "ill-repute" or a "common whore," the case will be referred to a higher court.
This act repeals several laws in New Brunswick that have been repealed in London, and creates new regulations for the administration of criminal cases.
This act repeals and amends the fifth section of an act first passed in 1758, which categorizes various types of crimes as felonies. The clause in question regards the punishment of mothers who attempt to hide the death of bastard children; it is amended so that women who are charged with murdering any children born of them who would be considered bastard children are to be tried by rule of evidence.
An act to repeal the former act respecting the murder of bastard children, which had been found inconvenient to put into practice. This act dictates that women charged with murdering "any issue of their bodies" will be tried as any other murder would be handled. Women convicted of murdering their bastards in order to conceal their birth are to be sentenced a period of hard labour not exceeding two years.