I was interested in the solicitor who 'abandoned' his illegit. daughter and the childs mother; just a bit on the side obviously, before his marriage. It reminded me of the way slave owners treated their women slaves, and often had children with them.
thing is we don't actually know that he did abandon Ann and his daughter. We have Mr Rose named on the baptism record (*wish I could see what the notes under the record said) in 1821 then nothing til we see his daughter Mary in 1851 census as a pauper/widow with 5 kids .. she was 30. (If we see paupers in our trees that are in their 30s do we usually think why isn't her dad helping her out at that age?) There is nothing about Ann requesting financial assistance from poor relief or anything else about her after 1821 so we have absolutely no idea if Mr Rose took a financial responsibility for his child up to her coming of age or not and we don't know if he ever had anything to do with Mary after her birth or not.
We know where and how Mary was living in 51 as a adult but we don't know how Ann had lived or how Mary lived before her marriage... for all we know Mr Rose could have made sure they were ok even if not living at same standard as himself. We don't know if Ann had any more children or married someone.
Jessie goes off to live with Mr Rose's sister which would give the impression that he was aware of some responsibility for the grandchild even if the programme does give the strong impression it wasn't done "with love" (*wondered what happened to Jessies siblings?)
We don't know if Mr Rose used, abused and abandoned Ann - we don't know how he knew her or if he had anything to do with her again after his marriage - she could have been his bit on the side for years / she could have been a very willing one night stand ... we simply do not know.
