Were bastardy orders common in victorian times?

[pendlelad]

Hi there,

My 2x Great grandmother was illegitimate and her father was not listed on the birth certificate. Her mother married someone less than a year after she was born, my grandfather seems to think he was her father but there is no way we can prove that..
I am just wondering if there are bastardy orders out there which could include the fathers name and where to find them?
The year was 1862

Regards,
Pendlelad

[stanmapstone]

The Poor Law Amendment Act 1844 took bastardy proceedings out of the poor law authorities and turned then into a civil matter between parents. The  Bastardy Act of 1845 enabled an unmarried mother to apply to the Petty Sessions for an affiliation order against the father for maintenance of the mother and child. Sometimes these were reported in the local paper.
See http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/information_and_explanation/world/history_uk.htm for the history of child support in the UK

Stan

[PrawnCocktail]

Hi Pendlelad,

I suspect it depended whether the mother needed to claim parish relief. Workhouses were usually seeking to recover costs if they thought they could.

If she didn't need parish relief or didn't pursue maintenance privately at the local Petty Sessions, there is, as far as I know, little hope of proving anything short of asking descendents of your ggmother's siblings to take a DNA test!

Bastardy Orders would be made by a court, either the local Petty Sessions, or (early 19th century and before) the Quarter Sessions. If it's Petty Sessions, what survives depends on the court. Some courts have loads of records, others hardly anything. If the Workhouse took action to recover costs, there may also be a reference in the Guardians of the Poor minute books.

[stanmapstone]

The Poor Law Amendment Act 1868 (31 and 32 Vict., c. 122), restored to the parish the power to recover from the the putative father the cost of maintenance of a bastard child by providing that, where a woman who had obtained an order against the father of her child herself became a charge of the parish, the justices might order payments to be made to the relieving officer.

Stan

[Andrew Tarr]

My 2x Great grandmother was illegitimate and her father was not listed on the birth certificate. Her mother married someone less than a year after she was born, my grandfather seems to think he was her father but there is no way we can prove that.. 

That depends - if you haven't seen your g-g-grandmother's marriage cert.  I found that my g-g-g-uncle fathered a daughter in 1848, not mentioned on her birth cert, but was named on her marriage cert in 1873.  After he died in 1885 the mother adopted his surname for the 1891 census, though they never married.  The daughter had always carried his surname though.

[pendlelad]

Hi all,

Thanks so much for the swift comments. I doubt very much that she would have needed workhouse protection or parish relief, she had a large tight knit family who probably would have helped her. I have done the Ancestry DNA test but noone has appeared yet who have the man who married my 2x great grandfathers mother in their family tree. I will just have to wait i suppose!

Why on earth they didn't record the fathers name even on illegitimate children's birth certificates is beyond me (i know in some circumstances they couldn't). I have another two or three quite close direct ancestors who were also illegitimate and their fathers not named..

Thanks again,
Pendlelad

[DonnaA23]

I found a grandmother in my direct line in 1834, in receipt of a bastardy bond  She had around five daughters in total, however she had been married, ....only the last one was illegitimate 

[iolaus]

On my 3+great grandfather's baptism it is written who is natural father is (and his alias) so that may be worth trying to find as well

[JAKnighton]

How do you go about finding these bastardy orders?

I ask because my 3x great grandmother Lizzie Wade Rimes was born illegitimate in 1868. Her mother was Elizabeth Rimes.
 
The following year, Elizabeth married Isaac Wade at the register office in Peterborough.

They had 11 more legitimate children after that, and Lizzie was then known as "Lizzie Rimes Wade" until she married John Robinson in 1888.

The inclusion of the name "Wade" as a middle name implies that Elizabeth was making a claim that Isaac was the father. The fact that it took a year to marry Isaac afterwards, and that it happened in a registry office, makes me think that a bastardy order took place.

I fully consider Lizzie to be the biological child of Isaac (partly because there is a resemblance between them in photos!) but would like more "evidence" that this is the case.