the gypsy family- the myth of taking children - Whitehouse/Bentley; Taylor/Smith

[chafox]

yes, I know!!
This is  one of those old boogie stories told to children to scare them at bedtime
But..... does it have some basis in what people saw happening?

 I have been wondering what it really means to  outsiders when they see how the family unit can form  in a traveller society.

I have now got two examples of spinster women ( or widows) who have around them a chain of children that don't have the same father.

1861 in Short Acre Walsall

Joseph Bentley    labourer at iron works (57)            b Lane End Stfs
Eliza Bentley                                            (42 or 62)   b        "  "      "
Elizabeth Whitehouse  (gr-dr)                 (32)             b        "  "     "
Mary                             (gr-dr)                  (11)            b Cofield Warwickshire
Charles                         (gr-son)               (              b      "           "
Sarah                            ( gr-dr)                (5)              b      "           "
Isaiah                           (gr-son)               (3)               b      "           "
Samuel                         (gr-son)               (6mo)           b      "           "

Sarah was my 3x gt grandmother.
Elizabeth was the mother  of her and the other four grandchildren, who  were sired by Joseph's sons, or other members of the Bentley family. I know Sarah's dad was a John Bentley, and in 1864, Elizabeth married an Isaac Bentley.

* incidentally Cofield is the lower part of Sutton Coldfield, and mostly Common Land, I believe.

My other example is from the family of Alice Taylor, who married the Isaiah above in 1903 in Rushall.

Alice said her father's name was Frederick Smith. Her son Henry married Isaiah's daughter Christina three years before, and said his father's name was Charles Taylor.
* so Isaiah married his daughter's mother-in-law!

But Alice Taylor  is in both the 1891 and 1901 censuses with a number of children that by the look of it, can hardly be the sons  and daughters of one man,  Charles Taylor, as in both censuses she  describes herself as a widow.

I'll give the 1891 census

It's in Nottingham

Alice Taylor (34)   charwoman  widow            b Wansted Essex
Fred          ( 13)    coalminer                           b West Ham Essex
Henry        (11)     schoolboy                          b West Ham Essex
Charles      (          "  "                                 b Walthamstow
John            (7)        "   "                                 b  Edmonton
Emily           (6)    schoolgirl                             b Nottingham

I have no information about Alice Smith, Charles Taylor, or any of the older children form 1881 or earlier censuses. I suspect that she may not have married Charles Taylor before 1881 ( there are a number of candidates from 1882 to 1886, so that most of the children above may not even be Charles' children,) and I think what I may have found  is another family of children of complex parentage travelling together with their mother - she has two totally different children in 1901, and is still a widow.

I would love to know more about Alice Taylor or Charles or her origins, but can't make the breakthrough.

Could this show two examples of families were the wife has been bearing children for more than one male member of a travelling family, or cohabiting with different men and being free about the surname that she adopts to describe them?

What I wonder is if this behaviour may have been seen by the communities that the travellers passed through, as gypsy women stealing children, because they were perceived as all belonging to different fathers?

What do you think?Any one else seen this sort of behaviour in their family history?

[cathayb]

sorry i am not rplying to your exact topic but i see you have davis landkey devon in your interests?were they travellers?if so i may have a connection.cathayb

[lolmac3]

Hi Chafox

You might have something there! my grandfather went to the Boer war for 3 years when he came back my aunt was one!!  and my grand dad just carried on as if it wasn't unusual, after that they had my mother.

My aunt knew grand dad wasn't her father (so I have just found out) so it wasn't a family secret and I have a few distant cousins that were 'adopted' well I don't think there was adoption in the early 1800's !

Lorraine

[chafox]

 quick reply to Cathayb,
sorry my Davis family weren't travrellers, they were farmers of Landkey.
My travellers were in the Kirby, Whitehouse and Bentley families in the Midland Counties.

Lorraine,
were your grandfather and family travellers?

I'm really interested in knowing if what I'm finding with my ancestors is true generally, that they were very free in forming their relatiionships amongst their  own kind, and that it didn't matter to them whether they married relatives  or relatives of former "partners".

I think if there's a custom going on then it'll be easier to see when it's happening as I look for them, and it'll be easier to get round the lies that they tell in order to hide the fact from people who consider that they are breaking taboos.

As for 'adoption', I think that in a travelling family there isn't such a taboo either.
 Although my great grandmother had one child by a lover, before running off with him, and left my grandfather to bring up all of the other children. She was a Kirby, and of traveller stock. I have a portrait of her, done when she was in her twenties, and she is stunning.
My gt grandad must have had enough of it all. he emigrated to America.

But the interesting thing is that my gt gran's sister Fanny married my gt grand's lover's brother, so again they were even finding their lovers amongst close relatives - I can actually trace the family links to mutual ancestors.

Terry

[lolmac3]

Hi Terry

Yes my family have been travellers for 9 generations right back to 1750 (thats as far as I have traced so far) my Grand mother did become a flattie (lived in a house) when my mum was about 5, but I have many distant cousins that still travel today!

I'm afraid that morally our ancesters weren't perfect, my grand parents never married and quite a few didn't in those days (in normal society it would have been quite shocking) but that's the way they were. Some married after they had finished having their children, I have quite a few of those. Also I have found in my research that as the families all travelled together they married each other too!

Lorraine

[honey-roma88]

Sorry to reopen this subject so long after it closed but I only just saw it.

I have two seperate Romany ancestor who both were childless and then acquired children in their fifties. There is no indication the children were stolen at all but they both acquired children around the same time.
One got a little girl (they?) called Ann Munday (they were Mundays) and the other got a young boy called Alfred Hardiman. They might well have been relations or friends children that they then adopted (or adapted as the census says ).

[Redroger]

For some reason my grandfather seems to have had no children with his first wife. From 1871 onwards to 1891 there is a string of "nurse children" in the household, some related, some apparently not. I believe them to have been orphaned children who were brought up by these people in an informal adoption,adoption was only formalised in the late 1920s. So far as I know there was no gypsy link in the family.I think the myth of taking children is just that, like the other myth that a gypsy caravan was burned with the dead owners possessions inside it. No caravan remains of any description have been found during any road widening scheme in the UK; unless of course someone knows differently.

[honey-roma88]

For some reason my grandfather seems to have had no children with his first wife. From 1871 onwards to 1891 there is a string of "nurse children" in the household, some related, some apparently not. I believe them to have been orphaned children who were brought up by these people in an informal adoption,adoption was only formalised in the late 1920s. So far as I know there was no gypsy link in the family.I think the myth of taking children is just that, like the other myth that a gypsy caravan was burned with the dead owners possessions inside it. No caravan remains of any description have been found during any road widening scheme in the UK; unless of course someone knows differently.

Apologies for my lack of knowledge about the subject but I am pretty certain (nay absolutely certain) that it was common for the caravan of a deceased traveller to be burnt as part of the ritual of death. I think I have even seen pictures of it happening. I am ashamed at my lack of knowledge on the subject though. 
I agree about the children thing being a myth with obvious motives. I am sure the children my ancestors unofficially adopted were probably orphaned Romany children although the Alfred Hardiman story is a bit of a strange one as I can find him and his 7 year old brother with their biological parents on one census - on the next census the brother is nowhere to be seen (not unusual as he would have been 17) but the father is on his own claiming he is widowed and the mother is also on her own somewhere else. God knows what went on there. 

[Redroger]

I think this will run and run, interesting that there are pictures of burning caravans. The point I would make is that were they burned by the roadside, or off road, in a field say? There was a fire in a caravan many years ago on an unofficial site at Marshgate Doncaster,I think causing the death of (2?) children, but whether it was connected with a previous death I don't know.