What surname did children out of wedlock get about 1875?

[PrawnCocktail]

No hard and fast rule, but the more respectable you were, the more you got away with. Or maybe dependant on whether the previous partner was still local!

Our small town had two (at least!) couples living without benefit of marriage, for years. One a respectable tradesman, the other in the poorest part of town. The tradesman, John Gibbs, had a failed marriage, disappeared to London for a few years and came back with his "wife" and child in tow, and went on to have a further 8 children, all registered and baptised as Gibbs. But when his "wife" died, while her death was registered as Gibbs, she was buried under her maiden name! His first wife lived in Derbyshire.

Our poorer couple, the wife was the one with the failed marriage. She started having children with Thomas Hillyer, but they were all registered under her name as Smith, with Hillyer usually as one of their Christian names. They later married, but the children were still usually called Smith, although that could vary - even when two of them joined the army! Her husband was living a few hundred yards away, until his death.

[Palomino]

So, you never can be sure. Everything is possible.

[Palomino]

Thank you everyone

[BenRalph]

My great granddad and his 3 brothers were all registered as Morgan - their mum’s husband’s name - even though their dad was called Hunt. My great granddad’s sister (also to Hunt) was registered as Fletcher - their mum’s maiden name - even though she was born in between the boys births. The husbands (along with the daughter from the marriage) lived a few streets away for 30 years and my grandma remembers there seemed to have been no shame in any of this. Although this was a bit later and in the 1910s.

[AntonyMMM]

My great granddad and his 3 brothers were all registered as Morgan - their mum’s husband’s name - even though their dad was called Hunt. My great granddad’s sister (also to Hunt) was registered as Fletcher - their mum’s maiden name - even though she was born in between the boys births. The husbands (along with the daughter from the marriage) lived a few streets away for 30 years and my grandma remembers there seemed to have been no shame in any of this. Although this was a bit later and in the 1910s.

They weren't registered under any surname (pre-1969) .... they would be INDEXED under the name MORGAN because that was the surname their mother was shown as on the entry. If the father HUNT had also been named (as an unmarried father) they would be indexed under his surname as well.

[Steve3180]

Just to emphasize what AntonyMMM has been saying. The birth certificate is a registration of a birth, not a name, the birth of a flesh and blood child, dead or alive, name or no name. The only name for the child on the certificate is the given name and even that isn't strictly necessary, just usual.

This idea of a legal, official name is a modern concept (and not exactly correct even now) that people are back applying onto events of one hundred and fifty years ago. In this country people are free to call themselves whatever they will and do so all the time, a marriage doesn't change a womans name, any more than a man's, she chooses to do so and may choose any other name at will, as can the man.

The other modern concept is that there are a hard and fast set of rules for how these certificates are filled in. There would certainly be the intent of such by officials in London, but in practice the informant could often neither read nor write and thus be unable to check what was written down by the registrar who could then put down whatever he chose to based on his own preferences and prejudices, nobody would, or indeed could, check his work.

To return to the original question, the birth certificate would contain whatever the mother said filtered through the medium of the registar. The child would be called whatever name the mother chose to call her.

Best not to get too hung up on technicalities when you're looking at 1877

[Gillg]

Even though the child was registered (or indexed) under the unmarried mother's surname there would sometimes be a clue as to the father's name, even if he was not willing to register the child as his.  I have examples of children entered under their unmarried mother's surname but with the surname of the father given as part of the forenames, e.g. John Smith (likely father) Jones (mother).  It's a helpful clue, though of course you can't be absolutely sure that the mother was telling the truth!

[KGarrad]

That doesn't always help!
A few years ago, I did a tree for a friend - a Manx family, surname Christian.
His grandmother had a relationship with a mariner from Walney Island, Cumbria.
All the children were baptised with a middle name of Conway - so that must be the father's surname.
No clues on the Baptism Register, which I have seen the original of.
He didn't hang around for any census; and too many Conway men on Walney!

My friend has since passed, and his son wasn't interested. So I stopped there.

[Gillg]

One relative had three children, each with a different father, we are told.  Only one of the three had his father's name included in his forenames.  Don't know where that leaves us!