["The main cause of the differences is the crime": An attempt at explaining the excess mortality of illegitimate children in The Hague in the mid-nineteenth century].

During the last quarter of the 19th century, illegitimate children had much higher infant mortality than legitimate children. To investigate which factors played a role in this, we collected information on the household situation and the life course of all illegitimate children, born in the Dutch city of The Hague in the years 1850-1852. Use was made of birth and death certificates and of the population registers of the city. We compared our information with data on a random sample of legitimate children,, born in the same city. After children had reached the age of one month, mortality among illegitimate children became very high, compared to that of our reference group. Proportional hazards analysis showed that this excess mortality was caused by a set of factors, the most important being the age of the mother at birth, regional background, and the socio-economic group to which the notifier of the birth belonged. Aside from those factors, legal status of the child as such had an effect on infant mortality. The unwed mothers most likely to lose their child in its first year of life lived alone with their child and were obliged to resume work to support themselves and their child. The opportunity to breastfeed may have played a key role in this.