I recently heard a radio program on the history of the Royal Womens Hospital (in Melbourne,Australia,in 1856). I was puzzled by the particularity of the newspapers of the day referring to it as a place where married women could give birth surrounded by modern convenience. I was horrified when the historian explained that, in fact, the hospital was quite innovative in that it insisted on allowing access to single mothers, (by the nuns and nurses that staffed the place) in opposition to establishment forces that had a (putatively)English prejudice against encouraging this sort of vice, and argued against forcing respectable women to give birth in the same place as women of low virtue. (from the records of the nurses, some of these women had very low virtue indeed - they record how much beer, opium and brandy were supplied for medicinal purposes, and the kind of language and behavior of their patients that prompted that medication!)