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I wonder if a more extreme form of "Boarding out children" was the case of the Home Children Scheme. It has been estimated that between the 1860s and the 1930s over 100,000 children were sent to Canada. This involved children who were orphaned, abandoned or were paupers on the assumption that they would benefit from a healthy life and moral upbringing in the countryside. Reality often proved otherwise.

Alan

Thank you - most informative.

I've sent you a PM if it's of interest.

Cheers Alan

Still something of a mystery is Mr Stokes. He appears in the 1881 census as a visitor in Station Road Great Easton, the house of horse dealer Charles Pretty. He is declared as married although he was on his own.

Curiously there was a marriage in the Uppingham District in the second quarter of 1870 between Thomas Stokes and Elizabeth Buzzard or Mary Ann Cant. Could Thomas getting married been the spur to Sarah Ann Claypole to take him to Court?

I haven't found any positive evidence of him (or a wife) after 1881.

This also leads to another conundrum. Was Thomas the father of Sarah Ann's daughter, Lizzie Alice, born a couple of years before? If he was, why hadn't this couple done the right thing and married? If not, who was this alternative "sperm donor"? Sarah Ann had a further six children after she married in August 1871.

The report says "when the case was called on neither party answered - Inspector Norman said the case had been privately settled"

The tragedy is that five years later the resultant little boy was murdered by his next door neighbour.

Alan