Lettice Fisher

Lettice Fisher was the founder of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, now known as Gingerbread. She was also an economist and a historian. During World War I, Fisher undertook welfare work among women munitions workers in Sheffield. It was the wartime scale of illegitimacy and its resulting hardships that led her, in 1918, to found the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, in order to challenge the stigma associated with single parent families, and to provide them with the support they needed. The Council aimed to reform the Bastardy Acts and Affiliation Orders Acts, which discriminated against illegitimate children, and also to address the higher death rates of children born outside marriage, by providing accommodation for single mothers and their babies. They also provided practical advice and assistance to single parents, and helped with their inquiries. Lettice Fisher was the first chair of the Council (from 1918 to 1950), with Sybil Neville-Rolfe acting as the deputy chair.