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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Shrop63 on Tuesday 18 February 25 09:59 GMT (UK)
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I was wondering what percentage of children were actually baptised around 1800? I thought every child was but why would some not be recorded?
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I would think the vast majority were baptised as otherwise you would not be able to prove that you had the right to support by the parish. Also you might not get to go to heaven.
However if you were Roman Catholic or some other non Anglican the records of your baptism are less likely to have survived.
In areas where the number of burial is higher than the number of baptisms this suggests a lot of non-conformists.
My g4 gdad was RC and his first son was baptised in the local Anglican Church as well probably by the RC priest. The other children seem to have been only had a RC baptism. When my g3 gdad got sick in 1815 he was removed from the parish and sent to another which was where he had been married. It all worked out for him after that. If not I would not be writing this.
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I wonder how one might get an accurate answer. No doubt one could count the recorded baptisms and assume all records were accessible, but how could one estimate the number who weren't ? Social convention obliged most people to get a baptism, but there are always some who don't comply, or follow religions that didn't baptise, or whose records have been lost ?
Perhaps the first question to answer is how many baptism records are lost or out of reach ?
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I found one of my "no baptism" ancestors with a mis-heard and recorded surname. Worth trying variations.
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Parish registers began in 1538 but many parish registers do not survive back that far or even Bishops Transcripts or Archdeacons Transcripts, I have come across some parishes where the earliest known surviving baptism is 1730. But luckily for me, at the Society of Genealogists in London I found a book of PR's taken from the Bishops transcripts of that said parish, going back to the mid 1600s. I got back 2 more generations. The parish is Barnham, Suffolk, just below Thetford, Norfolk.
I would have thought if in 1800 parents would want their child baptised so they can go to heaven, and if they ever needed parish relief, they could get their baptism record. But I do not think when they married they had to show proof of baptism or anything.
Also they may have been baptised in a workhouse as well as a non conformist chapel. Or baptised before the parents married under the mother's maiden name, or a different parish or under a surname variant.
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Distinguish between baptism generally and C of E baptism recorded in the parish registers. Long before 1800 some children were "baptised" by Nonconformist preachers (cf Rev James Woodforde, Diary Vol 1 p 212; "He had the Impudence to tell me that he would send [the child] to some Meeting House to be named ..."). For some parishes non-C of E baptisms were more frequent by 1800. Also, some private baptisms may have been unrecorded; and some children died before they could be baptised, even privately.
A possible way of checking the baptism rate is to compare recorded child burials with recorded baptisms. I have done this for Louth, Lincolnshire, for burials in the years 1765-9 and concluded that the unbaptised percentage of children buried was 13.9%. At the time Louth had very few RCs or Nonconformists.
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Thanks guys, I, m struggling to find a bap around 1793 ish, I, ll try variations on surname
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There's also good old miswritten or omitted records.
Aside from the possibility of some entries being forgotten entirely, I've got some where the child's name is blank, or the original record or transcription has incorrectly copied some information from the line above (for example). On one occasion I had two cousins christened on the same day and the second child was given the same name in the record by accident.
Sometimes the records were written in batches rather than after each individual baptism so mistakes could be made there. Sometimes the surviving record is itself a copy (such as Bishop Transcripts) where mistakes have been made when copying the original parish record.
For a christening in 1793, you also have options of:
- The entire original record hasn't survived
- The particular page that includes that record hasn't survived or is illegible
- The record hasn't been transcribed and uploaded to an online database
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Do you want to post the details of who you are looking for.
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No direct evidence but I get the impression that girls were more likely to be baptised than boys.
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I have an ancestor born c1763/1764 in Suffolk, most likely, whose baptism I have never been able to find, but the parents were millers and they flitted between Norfolk and Suffolk and moved around a lot. He had 2 older siblings baptised in 1750 and 1760, but I found a 4th sibling who died in 1774 but no age at death but the parents names were given on the burial. No baptism has been found for the final child either.
20 years ago at Lowestoft, a long standing archivist there said there could be many reasons, or maybe the Titshall's were out of Suffolk when the baby was born 1763/1764.
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Thanks guys, I, m struggling to find a bap around 1793 ish, I, ll try variations on surname
Also, you should be aware that not everyone was baptised as a baby or young child, they might be baptised much later. So, it's worth checking later years.
I used to transcribe old parish records, and I've seen many examples of later baptisms - including where several siblings of varying ages (from babies to 10/11 years old, sometimes older) were baptised together in a "batch". Also, adults baptised carried shortly before they married.
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Just to add another dimension, I have two sister who were not baptised until several years after their marriage, all their siblings were baptised as babies. So don’t expect any had and fast rule.
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My mam had a "set" of four cousins... the girls were bapped as RC and the boys as C of E.
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Do you want to post the details of who you are looking for.
Yes a Leonard Ellis, around 1793ish around Wellington Shropshire, I have his marriage but no bap