RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: PurdeyB on Monday 04 April 22 17:18 BST (UK)
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I've been watching the repeats of Michael Wood's Story of England and the last programme covered the fact that literacy rates were much higher than many of us understand them to have been. It made me look again at the record I have for my 5 x GG marriage in 1761.
As my G x 5 grandfather's trade was charcoal burner, had I thought about it before, I would probably have expected both to be illiterate. In fact, both appear to have signed the register in their own right. There are entries elsewhere on the page which are signed by mark.
It's an observation rather than a question as such but if anyone can shed light on the level of education they might have received - church school? at home? - it would be interesting.
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One thought that occurs to me is that the signatures may not be those of the witnesses, as the wording is 'in the presence of' which strictly could be in anyone's writing (but by convention isn't), and if that were the case, the name would be unfamiliar to the person signing, making it appear a little clumsy.
In later years when copies were made for the register, the cleric clearly filled in signatures, and I suppose that might be the case here. The styles are not wildly different, tho the capital W may be an attempt at variation.
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Thanks, Andrew. It's possible and I'd assumed so previously. It's not clear on the extract but the layout is:
This marriage was solemnized between us {John Branfoot
Dorothy Walker
In the presence of { Geo Walker
Thomas Robinson
There are other entries on the same page which are set out as:
This marriage was solemnized between us { The mark of [first name] X [last name]
Similarly for some of the witnesses.
I cut the entry in the new attachment when I copied it as it wasn't of interest but it shows the variety of signatures in the register.
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They are signatures of the parties ....but being able to sign your name doesn't automatically mean you were completely literate
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They are signatures of the parties ....but being able to sign your name doesn't automatically mean you were completely literate.
Of course you may well be right, Antony. But the slope of every signature seems suspiciously similar to me, and the cursive nature suggests that everyone signing was pretty 'literate'. Signatures from four different people would usually have varied rather more, in my opinion.
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I think the signatures are all by different hands, but as someone else has commented, people supposedly used to learn to only sign their name (although I am not sure what the source for that is). I think most places probably had church or charity schools which would teach up to about the age of 10, but from then on if the child had the means or a scholarship they may attain entry to a Grammar School in the nearest big town or city, otherwise they would go out to work, or work within whatever the family business was.
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I am no expert, but we are talking here about the 1760s, and I'm not sure how many places could then offer the services you mention. People may have been taught how to sign their name, but I can't think of many occasions when that might have been needed (at least by an 'adult'), so any attempt might have been rather less fluid than the examples above. That's my suspicion, anyway.
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I am no expert, but we are talking here about the 1760s, and I'm not sure how many places could then offer the services you mention. People may have been taught how to sign their name, but I can't think of many occasions when that might have been needed (at least by an 'adult'), so any attempt might have been rather less fluid than the examples above. That's my suspicion, anyway.
I think many churches had little schools Andrew, almost certainly not 5 days a week, perhaps only 2 or 3 but there would likely be some kind of church led learning or perhaps charitable institution in towns or cities that ran schools.
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http://www.educationengland.org.uk/history/chapter05.html#04
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I am no expert, but we are talking here about the 1760s, and I'm not sure how many places could then offer the services you mention. People may have been taught how to sign their name, but I can't think of many occasions when that might have been needed (at least by an 'adult'), so any attempt might have been rather less fluid than the examples above. That's my suspicion, anyway.
I think many churches had little schools Andrew, almost certainly not 5 days a week, perhaps only 2 or 3 but there would likely be some kind of church led learning or perhaps charitable institution in towns or cities that ran schools.
I'm not denying the existence of those schools, just suggesting that after leaving school (probably at 12 or younger) those people would rarely need to sign anything unless they had to write in their profession. I would expect more variety of writing style, as in these examples from my ancestors, who were mostly ordinary 'working class'. Some signatures are not easy to confirm: one is Charlotte Fisher, which has been erroneously transcribed here and there.
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Totally off the topic of this post, but one photograph of register entries has
Rev Jos Brooke .
Date 1805 .
There was a very well known
Cleric of that name at Manchester Cathedral that date.
Quite a fierce but down to earth man,mentioned at length in a book written about the time of Peterloo,” The Manchester Man, “.
There is a statue of him in Manchester Cathedral.
Not all churches were licensed for marriages or Christenings, so people would go to have babies Christened ,or adults married in The Cathedral ,which was.
He often refused to give babies their parents’ choice of name, !
I was very pleased and interested to see his name.
Viktoria.
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Thanks for your interesting post, Viktoria. George Young was one of my ggg-grandfathers. I may find time to seek out this statue, as we are only 30 miles from Manchester. Of course you will know that in 1805 that church was only a Collegiate Church, it became a cathedral much later, and of course still looks like the parish church of a large town, just as Blackburn cathedral does.
The Manchester baptism registers for that time show what a production line there must have been, literally dozens or scores of infants being processed every Sunday.
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Thankyou ,yes I was not sure when it became a Cathedral.
The chapter recounts the many Baptisms,and also “ Churchings “
A custom that has died out I think.
It is lovely inside and so near Humphrey Cheethams’ ( spellings vary) school.
Also what was the old Grammar School,( became Long Millgate Teacher’s Training College ,)there was was rivalry between the two, part of the story.
That is now part of The College of Music.
Joshua Brooke lived on the bend of Long Millgate .
There were small humble dwellings all round The Collegiate Church.
Cheetham’s boys were often in the choir .
My husband was asked to interview as he had a lovely treble voice as a small boy,there would have been a stiff exam .He was not a bit interested ,into football even in junior school .
Later when articled to accountancy he did the initial audit at Chethams,in the beautiful library ,I asked if he had regrets re being a scholar—— not a moment’s ,lA long blue coat,pancake hat and yellow stockings, shoes with big buckles?
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D!Not in Ancoats!!!
Viktoria.
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Thankyou ,yes I was not sure when it became a Cathedral. Viktoria.
It was not till 1847.
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My gt-gt-gt-grandfather signed the register for both his weddings (1798 & 1811). His first wife Mary died and he married again to a woman called Mary, like his first wife - caused all kinds of problems when researching his wife and it took me a while to find out that there were two Marys. His signature was identical on both register entries, but since he was an ag lab I don't know whether he would have been able to write anything else or even read.
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Similarity in handwriting is pretty much inevitable where the same person taught the parties involved.
The person teaching, especially in rural districts, may well have been Parish Clerk or even the clergyman. Many of those getting married in a period would have been of similar age, so would have learned from the same teacher.
A century later the marriage entry of my gg gm Ann Jones has Anne Swindley as a witness. Both myself and my mum came to the conclusion that the same person taught them to write, so similar were the letters in their given names. Both women came from a little village over 50 miles away.
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Similarity in handwriting is pretty much inevitable where the same person taught the parties involved.
Up to a point I think you are right, Andrew, but even rod-of-iron discipline, which was probably the norm at that time, cannot eliminate personal differences in writing. And I suspect most children would learn to write on a slate rather than with pen and ink. I wonder if left-handedness was suppressed in the 18th century as it certainly was later. Even today some American handwriting looks somehow typical, and definitely not British. But I still believe that even if many children learnt to write their names, the need for most of them to actually do that after leaving school (usually quite young) would mean that the skill would become rusty by the time they married.
Anyway, why stop at learning to write one's name ?
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Handwriting or lack of handwriting proves very little, as I have mentioned in earlier posts much will depend on what the person is told or invited to do, for example when I was in senior school we were told to put or mark on a paper we had to sign before going to a cadet force camp in the holidays. well over 30% of the boy put a cross on the paper even though they all had good literacy skills. The problem was the officer was a stickler for the cadets to obey orders without question, so many did just that.
Another example is my sister Dianne a well educated and literate person, who married twice once in 1977 then again in 2001, the first time she signed her name the second time because of an earlier accident she no longer had the motor skills to sign her name and so a cross was put on the register by the Assistant Registrar who officiated at the wedding.
Cheers
Guy
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I'm defending the handwriting.
These days most people are used to writing with a ball point pen and have no idea how difficult it is/was to use somebody else's ink pen, where the nib would not accommodate a stranger's handwriting style. Nibs were narrow, medium or wide - I preferred a medium nib for my handwriting style.
Additionally as the year is 1827, it could very well be that an old fashioned quill (a goose or swan wing feather) was used as the writing implement. The owner of the pen has beautifully styled handwriting, and the quill would probably have had a wide "nib" to accommodate the writer.
Back in the 1950s - 1960s I used to see men who worked on the land try to hold a pen. In those days and certainly in the 1820s, the work meant hands were calloused and very difficult to bend sufficiently to hold a narrow pen with ease.
P.S. The church in Manchester became a cathedral in 1847, when the Diocese of Manchester was created.
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Totally off the topic of this post, but one photograph of register entries has
Rev Jos Brooke .
Date 1805 .
There was a very well known
Cleric of that name at Manchester Cathedral that date.
Quite a fierce but down to earth man,mentioned at length in a book written about the time of Peterloo,” The Manchester Man, “.
There is a statue of him in Manchester Cathedral.
Not all churches were licensed for marriages or Christenings, so people would go to have babies Christened ,or adults married in The Cathedral ,which was.
He often refused to give babies their parents’ choice of name, !
I was very pleased and interested to see his name.
Viktoria.
A friend of mine went to see a play about Joshua Brookes at the Cathedral quite a few years ago - something about missing grooms - wished I’d gone too. I couldn’t believe what I heard when she said if a groom was late for the wedding Joshua Brookes would get another male from the congregation as a stand in for the groom and continue with the marriage…
Barbara
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A friend of mine went to see a play about Joshua Brookes at the Cathedral quite a few years ago - something about missing grooms - wished I’d gone too. I couldn’t believe what I heard when she said if a groom was late for the wedding Joshua Brookes would get another male from the congregation as a stand in for the groom and continue with the marriage…
I wonder what he did if a bride was late - which by present-day custom is much more common ? ;D
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And I suspect most children would learn to write on a slate rather than with pen and ink. I wonder if left-handedness was suppressed in the 18th century as it certainly was later.
But I still believe that even if many children learnt to write their names, the need for most of them to actually do that after leaving school (usually quite young) would mean that the skill would become rusty by the time they married.
A report on a Catholic elementary school in Preston, Lancashire around 1820 remarked that writing ability of pupils was satisfactory on slates but poor on paper. The school charged a fee for penmanship to cover cost of writing materials (may have been an extra penny a week). Some parents may not have been able or willing to pay the extra weekly penny. Some pupils wouldn't have stayed long enough at school to advance to penmanship.
There was an illegal Catholic school in the small town of Lytham, Lancashire in C.18th. Between a quarter and a third of the population of the town were Catholic. It's noticeable that the majority of bridegrooms, brides and witnesses signed their names. A stable-lad and a maidservant at the hall both signed their names. Owner of the hall, the lord of the manor, was R.C. as were many of his staff, so it's a fair bet that the stable-lad and the maid were.
My 5xGGF in nearby Kirkham wrote his name when he married in 1788. He was an ag, lab. The name was carefully printed in a round hand, like a child would write. He didn't use capital letters for initials.
A 5xGGM wrote A for Alice when she married in 1760. Her husband signed his name. I have a copy of his signed will 50 years later. He was a stonemason and probably made inscriptions on tombstones and new buildings. He witnessed a few weddings, perhaps while he was working in the church or churchyard.