Top Family Secrets

[Guy Etchells]

The reason for the C of E noting if the child was a bastard or not is very simple they were very often required to provide for that child under the poor laws.
Cheers
Guy

[KathMc]

What a great list. I have 7 out of the 11. I don't have so much illegitimacy as I do getting married while already pregnant.

Kath

[Musicman]

The reason for the C of E noting if the child was a bastard or not is very simple they were very often required to provide for that child under the poor laws.
Cheers
Guy

I do not think that the reason is as simple as you believe. Nor was it the sole reason for those details to be against a child’s name in the Baptismal Records.  The main reason the church would do that is because a child had been born out of wedlock – which, in those days, was a sin.  The child had been conceived outside the sanctity of marriage.

Nor must we forget that to be illegitimate carried a considerable social stigma for the child - it could also mean social rejection and poverty – for the child as well as the mother. 

This, in turn, also highlights the enormous power of, and held by the Church, per se, and which was wielded over people’s lives in those times.

It’s worth reading earlier comments made on this particular page – Replies #9 (Windsor87) and #11 (aghadowey).

[ludovica]

tbh, I'm not sure what "secrets" I have discovered.. Pretty much everything was unknown.

My grandfather had a brother and sister that died young we never knew about.

 I *suspect* that his grandparents may not have been legally married, but there's always the possibility that a certificate may turn up with some mangled spelling.

 I think the most horrible things I've discovered are when people end up in the workhouse, and dying there, whilst still "in the prime of life" because of widowhood, abandonment or illness'


There was talk, at a recent family funeral of the legend of a murder, but sadly it was the deceased person who had known the story and no-one else did

[Elizabeth Revel]

I have recently been transcribing some parish records from the 1850's and note that although there were quite a number of births to single women, for some the register shows that the mother is a single woman but for others there is no additional comment regarding the status of the child or mother. This is in quite stark contrast to some of the other parish records I have looked through.

I wonder whether in a small parish particular circumstances were accepted as they may not have been in a more bustling area.

Beth

[ludovica]

I have recently been transcribing some parish records from the 1850's and note that although there were quite a number of births to single women, for some the register shows that the mother is a single woman but for others there is no additional comment regarding the status of the child or mother. This is in quite stark contrast to some of the other parish records I have looked through.

I wonder whether in a small parish particular circumstances were accepted as they may not have been in a more bustling area.

Beth

I guess it depends on the clergyman... possibility though of people turning "a blind eye" in those cases where men had gone off to the Crimea etc?.. just a thought

[KathMc]

I agree. Some clergy might have been more understanding and open minded. I have an entry in a parish record from New Jersey that states the woman refuses to marry the father because he is "Protestant and useless." Ah, so many ways to read that.

Kath

[ludovica]

I agree. Some clergy might have been more understanding and open minded. I have an entry in a parish record from New Jersey that states the woman refuses to marry the father because he is "Protestant and useless." Ah, so many ways to read that.

Kath

That really made me laugh!!!!

[EDO]

................  a parish record from New Jersey that states the woman refuses to marry the father because he is "Protestant and useless.". ..................

Kath

Hello Kath,

At least it's a welcome variation on the often-vaunted [female] remark about being male and useless!!
 

BUT THEN, it could well become -

being a useless Protestant male

 
EDO