3 - Social Morality

Summary

This chapter explores social morality on the home front focusing on the commentary about the public behaviour of soldiers’ wives, anxiety about a supposed increase in incidences of female drunkenness, and concern about prostitution and the spread of venereal disease. It tracks the number of wartime arrests of women for drunkenness and child neglect. The chapter argues that the hostility to separation women transcended the nationalist movement, and that while there were many incidences of soldiers’ wives arrested for drunken behaviour, the rhetoric exaggerated the reality with total convictions for drunkenness declining in wartime Ireland after the first year of the war.The chapter further explores concern with sexual immorality in wartime, focusing on venereal disease and illegitimate births. It also examines the women’s patrols established to limit the public interaction between working-class women and the soldiers. The chapter concludes that the public behaviour of working-class women in Ireland altered little as a consequence of the war, but there was nevertheless greater censure of problems evident before 1914. While the separation allowances brought women greater control over their domestic spaces, the surveillance of state and society confined women to narrowly defined codes of behaviour.