RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Norfolk Nan on Wednesday 13 August 25 11:11 BST (UK)
-
My grandfather, born 1902, was registered as the child of his mother's husband but raised by a man I've assumed was his genetic father. The next time I can find him in documentation is the 1911 census when he's with 'dad' and other family members. He has assumed that family name and uses it for life.
Does anyone know if any documentation would be needed to explain the changed circumstances? I don't know when or how he went from mum to 'dad' but if there's some evidence I'd like to trace it.
Thanks.
-
Before 1927, when the Adoption Act came into force in England & Wales, there was no requirement to maintain records of any adoption whether it was within the greater family group or with complete strangers.
Some Church & Charity groups did maintain records but if your suspicions about this adoption are correct there would probably have been no paper trail.
-
Thank you.
I didn't think it would be easy 😕 Still, I suppose the authorities were just happy someone was looking after an unwanted child. DNA isn't helping so my imagination is running riot.
-
When you think about it, in the late Victorian/early Edwardian period, officialdom or the state very rarely interacted with most individuals. No social security, no state pensions, no income tax (until the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1913 only those earning more than £150 a year were considered for taxation), only males who owned property or paid rent over 10s were able to vote, no national health service, no passports. For many, all you had to do was to show your parish of birth, and by 1900 in the larger conurbations, the poor law idea of removing a person back to his or her rural parish of birth had ceased. On that basis why did anyone in authority need to know with any precision who your parents were? It was really only in matters of inheritance that it might be necessary to have documentary proof of your antecedents. Of course much of that changed with the First World War.