I would welcome views on this please. My grandmother was born in Broughton Gifford, a small village in Wiltshire. Her mother a Caroline Tylee (nee Timbrell) was a widow aged 39 years old, who had maried a batchelor William Gerrish, less than a month before her birth. Given that she had been married a couple of years before the birth of her first child, and appears to have been from a christian and respectable family, would this not have been frowned on in those days and an undesirable position for a woman of that age? Or was it not a problem in working class country communities? Incidentally, her first husband had died several years before, so the child was not his. The man she married William Gerrish was violent, drank and gambled, and there seems something odd about the whole thing. My grandmother told my uncle that there was something about the family she had never told him, but then decided not to tell. I am wondering if one of her older daughters (my grandmothers step sisters) had fallen pregnant and Caroline had brought my grandmother up as her own, and registered the birth in her name. I know I shall never find this out, but was wondering what people know about the views of unmarried mothers at that time. Also was it common for people to lie when registering births. Any ideas welcome!
