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In this paper, we try to study a specific comportment: the high fertility of some unwed mothers during the nineteenth century. We focus on the life-course of these women, living in the city of Lyons, where the proportion of illegitimate births was very high. We found about one hundred unwed women, each of them giving birth to five illegitimate children or more.The reconstruction of their life courses, including successive deliveries and moving houses, allows to perceive their daily reality: repeated pregnancies, unskilled works, cohabitation or loneliness, vulnerability, and, sometimes, occasional prostitution. Anyway, in spite of their high fertility, these women do not bring up large families, because of the very high mortality undergone by their children.