Hello my lovely betricksters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here with your Fair Doos warning.

I actually need to give you quite a serious Fair Doos warning today. I know that I like

to mess around with the warning and you seem to like me doing that as well, but this is

quite a serious one because today we are talking about the history of pregnancy in the

19th century and that will mean that we are talking about things like fertility and conception

and inevitably baby loss. And you just might not want to listen to that today. In which case,

this is your Fair Doos warning to just switch us off, go and find something else to listen

to and we will catch you next time.

Join me in a very dark Victorian bedroom of Twixters. We are in the second floor of a

house in London in 1897. The shutters are closed, shutting out all daylight. It's hot inside,

you can hear the sound of day to day life, the hustle and bustle taking place on the street outside,

but in this room, it is quiet, it is hot, it is still, it is stifling. And there is a very tired

lady in the bed. The lady of the house in fact, who has been ordered by her doctors to see nobody.

She's also been advised not to move, not to read, not to talk for nine whole days. She just has

to lie there being still. The reason for what is ultimately solitary confinement is because she's

just given birth. Doctors at the time believed that movement or exposure to light and even company

and talking so soon after a baby would cause disaster in their words. Of course, if you were poor,

there's no way that you could take to your bed for nine days, but being poor in pregnant

in the 19th century is a whole different story. Today, we are going but Twixtersheets to look into

the hidden history of maternal bodies in Victorian Britain. Everything from fertility, contraception

pregnancy to childbirth and the differences between how rich and poor mothers were treated.

What do you have for me, man? Oh, money. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

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