Old fashioned way of saying child payments?

[Mercia118]

I've been idly browsing the northants archive catalogue (as you do ) and I came across this:
Bonds against chargeability- James Dainty of Orton (Frances Page, infant lodged in Desborough) 25th March 1794

Is that an old fashioned way of saying our Jim got a bit frisky and now he's got to pay child support?

[stanmapstone]

See The History of Child Support http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/information_and_explanation/world/history_uk.htm

Stan

[stanmapstone]

If it was a case of illegitimacy then see
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/oldpoorlaw.shtml#Bastardy

Stan

[andrewalston]

There was a lot of it about!

The depressing thing is that the courts had preprinted fill-in-the-blanks forms. There was a slightly different form for use where the putative father failed to show up in court, just to save writing a few words differently.

[jorose]

When a person became in need of poor relief they were "chargeable to the parish", so this is presumably another term for an indemnity or bastardy bond - required of James to prevent the parish having to pay for the support of the illegitimate child of Frances.

You can see some more info and an example here:
https://www.londonlives.org/static/WB.jsp