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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Mercia118 on Tuesday 18 February 20 12:11 GMT (UK)

Title: Old fashioned way of saying child payments?
Post by: Mercia118 on Tuesday 18 February 20 12:11 GMT (UK)

I've been idly browsing the northants archive catalogue (as you do ::) ) and I came across this:
Bonds against chargeability- James Dainty of Orton (Frances Page, infant lodged in Desborough) 25th March 1794

Is that an old fashioned way of saying our Jim got a bit frisky and now he's got to pay child support?

Title: Re: Old fashioned way of saying child payments?
Post by: stanmapstone on Tuesday 18 February 20 12:15 GMT (UK)

See The History of Child Support http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/information_and_explanation/world/history_uk.htm

Stan

Title: Re: Old fashioned way of saying child payments?
Post by: stanmapstone on Tuesday 18 February 20 12:19 GMT (UK)

If it was a case of illegitimacy then see
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/oldpoorlaw.shtml#Bastardy

Stan

Title: Re: Old fashioned way of saying child payments?
Post by: andrewalston on Tuesday 18 February 20 14:28 GMT (UK)

There was a lot of it about!

The depressing thing is that the courts had preprinted fill-in-the-blanks forms. There was a slightly different form for use where the putative father failed to show up in court, just to save writing a few words differently.

Title: Re: Old fashioned way of saying child payments?
Post by: jorose on Tuesday 18 February 20 16:29 GMT (UK)

When a person became in need of poor relief they were "chargeable to the parish", so this is presumably another term for an indemnity or bastardy bond - required of James to prevent the parish having to pay for the support of the illegitimate child of Frances.

You can see some more info and an example here:
https://www.londonlives.org/static/WB.jsp