Illegitimate births

I think some attitudes still persist to this day. Illegitimacy has become accepted and I truly hope children aren't put up for adoption (or worse) just because they're illegitimate.

Nevertheless, we're still having discussions about the number of people on benefits and debating whether poor people are "deserving" or "undeserving". Single mothers were considered undeserving, especially if they had a number of illegitimate children. (Little mention of the men, although parishes did make them pay towards the upkeep of their children, if fatherhood could be proved - that changed after 1834.)

I'm reading a book about the Poor Laws since the Elizabethan Age. A word which comes up quite frequently is "indigent", which I don't think is used today. It means so impoverished that people don't have the means to support themselves. There are still people like that, but we call them something different. Interestingly, it seemed as though it was accepted in the 19th century (and before) that there would always be some people who are indigent. There were heated debates about what to do with them.

I didn't find out properly until I was 14 what my true background was. I didn't fully understand the whispers and comments.
Our neighbours knew long before I did.

henetha

Thanks Growstuff. I appreciate your comment.

I can't imagine how horrible it must have been to have known that you were rejected by your own parents.

eddiecat78

One reason for illegitimacy was that it was so difficult/expensive to get divorced. My great grandparents separated. She then had 3 illegitimate children with another man. They were together for 30 years before they got married when great grandfather died

That's a good point. I've come across a couple of cases like that.

My maternal grandmother was divorced in the 1950s. My mother told me how complicated it all was. My grandmother never remarried, but she was (for those days) a woman of "means", so I guess she could afford the divorce and to live the rest of her life as a single divorcee.

Thanks Growstuff. I appreciate your comment.

jusnoneed

I transcribe records for a couple of online sites, and there were many single mums. Sometimes they had multiple children over the years. And when you check marriages and first births there are lots that occur within a few months of each other.
You sometimes find the child is baptised with the fathers surname as a middle name. One lot of records I did had a single woman having more than one child with the same married man(he also had children with his wife). The vicar in the parish wrote the names of the fathers beside the baptism records, how he knew all of them is the question!
Also some shown as son or daughter on census records are more likely to be grandchildren.

My mum was one of five children that my unmarried Nan had.
Many, many more born without married parents these days, my youngest included, records will be much harder to search and work out in the future. Myself and my partner have been together for over 40 years but there will be no record of that.

It's going to be a nightmare for future genealogists!

My daughter is married, but hasn't taken her husband's name. I have no idea what they'll do, if they have children.

My brother was shocked that my parents married mid March and he was born mid September, weighing a healthy eight and a half pounds…

henetha

I was illegitimate and it blighted my young life considerably.
It's a long story, but basically my parents were teenagers who ran away together, but after my birth decided they didn't like each other and I was put up for adoption at two weeks old.
Thank goodness this is no longer a stigma in this country.
Countless people suffered needlessly because of this ridiculous form of snobbery.

You have my sympathy and I agree with you.

My own ancestors seem to have been quite a "respectable" lot, although I do know that one of my father's aunts was pregnant when she married. Her son was horrified when he started doing family history research and discovered his parents' marriage certificate.

My ex husband's family were very different. There are at least four generations of them in the same line where the mothers must have been pregnant when they married - or, in one case, didn't marry and her child was brought up thinking that his mother was his sister. My ex's mother was pregnant when she married, but still looked down on her husband's family.

I was illegitimate and it blighted my young life considerably.
It's a long story, but basically my parents were teenagers who ran away together, but after my birth decided they didn't like each other and I was put up for adoption at two weeks old.
Thank goodness this is no longer a stigma in this country.
Countless people suffered needlessly because of this ridiculous form of snobbery.

DH's Great-grandfather kept appearing and disappearing from the records and eventually I discovered he had been born out of wedlock, and had his mother's surname. Then, when his mother married they called him by his step-father's surname on census records. He alternated between the two until he got married and reverted to his mother's surname, which was the name I recognised.

I found the records of an ancestor who was accepted by the Royal Hospital School in Greenwich. The application asks for the date the parents were married, so presumably it was important that prospective officers in the Royal Navy had married parents. I wonder if he would have been accepted if his parents hadn't been married.

Cold

I found out that my great aunt and uncle (my grandad's sister) were never married at all.

and also that an ancestor in the 1850s was transported to Australia for stealing a jar of pickled pork but did not survive the journey.

One of my ancestors on my DM's side got six months in prison for receiving part of a stolen sheep. I'm surprised he didn't get transported.

My MiL was a teache rin a rural area and said during her teaching career (1930s-early 1970s). A number of children passed through her class with mothers in their 50s, whose last previous child was 15 years old or more.

She said in these cases a pregnancy in an unmarried daughter would be hidden by the mother saying it was her child. In many cases these girls were the victims of incest and their faher had fathered the child.

Yes, this is a common occurence when looking through baptism records.

We have forgotten that there was little or no contraception then. It is just the easiest thing in the world to get pregnant if sex is not protected.

I'm not sure it wasn't frowned upon though. My own great grandparents got married only weeks before my grandad was born. My grandma told us that we shouldn't ask or look into the past, I presume because of a sense of lingering shame.

Many women were forced into marriages for this reason, in fact my own cousin (much older than me) was forced into a marriage for the same reason although they did eventually divorce.

Most of our ancestors were pretty broke- no sickness benefits then, no unemployment benefits, no workers rights. Sometimes we go looking for some ancestral pile when looking up our family histories, but the truth is often more dull. Unmarked graves are a sign also that they focused on the basics of life out of necessity.

For me this shows that society has changed a great deal.

I do agree though, that family history is an important way of learning that the things we learned about in history books did have a direct impact on the lives of our forebears, and continues to do so today.

I've found a lot of ancestors having to go to the poor house, my GF left my GM with two young children, went to USA to see his sister didn't stay long, he came back and was jailed for 2 months for leaving them penniless. she had to go to the poor house . his excuse was that he didn't know she had no money.
in those days a lot of children were raised by the grandparents
Ancestry is so interesting, and there were a lot of illigitimate children.

I have thoroughly enjoyed researching my family history. I found a couple of marriages with a baby arriving a few months later. One thing I discovered was a Gr Gr Gr Grandmother who had triplets. Delivery and the survival of mother and all 3 babies was quite an achievement in those days.

I transcribe records for a couple of online sites, and there were many single mums. Sometimes they had multiple children over the years. And when you check marriages and first births there are lots that occur within a few months of each other.
You sometimes find the child is baptised with the fathers surname as a middle name. One lot of records I did had a single woman having more than one child with the same married man(he also had children with his wife). The vicar in the parish wrote the names of the fathers beside the baptism records, how he knew all of them is the question!
Also some shown as son or daughter on census records are more likely to be grandchildren.

My mum was one of five children that my unmarried Nan had.
Many, many more born without married parents these days, my youngest included, records will be much harder to search and work out in the future. Myself and my partner have been together for over 40 years but there will be no record of that.

One reason for illegitimacy was that it was so difficult/expensive to get divorced. My great grandparents separated. She then had 3 illegitimate children with another man. They were together for 30 years before they got married when great grandfather died

Both my grandfathers were conceived out of wedlock, although one was born to married parents.

Being born illegitimate was a real hindrance in life and/so when my paternal grandfather signed up to join the army, he gave himself a deceased father with a professional occupation. He worked his way through the ranks and was eventually commissioned as an officeer and I do wonder whether that would have happened if it had been known that he was illegitimate.

None of his family knew he was illegitimate until after he died, when his mother's death certificate was found among his papers and she was described on it as being unmarried when she died.

He had never talked about his anticedents. His children were told that his father died before he was born so that he did not know him and his mother died when he was 10 (true) and he was brought up by an uncle, also true.

The explanation 'my father died before I was born' was an explanation often used to cover up illegitimacy, or a woman would buy a ring, move from her home area to somewhere where she wasn't known and explain her single mother status by saying she was a widow.

This explanation was a bit hard on other children, where their parents were married, and they had been born after their father died. This applied to one of my grandmothers. However she was the fifth child, not an only.

In the church records there are references to ‘bastard son of so and so’
Didn’t hold back, did they ?

I found out that my great aunt and uncle (my grandad's sister) were never married at all.

and also that an ancestor in the 1850s was transported to Australia for stealing a jar of pickled pork but did not survive the journey.

Elegran
The wedding did happen, and their first child (first of seventeen) was born about two months later. I have this mental picture of him signing his name with the girl's father standing behind him, shotgun in hand.

Yes, it conjured up that image in my mind too 😁

Oldnproud Round about that same date, late 18th century, one of my forefathers was the only one of my ancestors to marry by getting a licence, not just by banns and ceremony in the parish church. I even found a record of the application for the licence - it said he and his girl were to marry by a certain date in a certain church, and there was a bond set for a pretty large amount to be paid if the marriage didn't happen. The signatories on the bond were the names of the bridegroom and his prospective father-in-law.

The wedding did happen, and their first child (first of seventeen) was born about two months later. I have this mental picture of him signing his name with the girl's father standing behind him, shotgun in hand.

Yes, I have found some but I don't think it was acceptable.
My Grandmother was 'illegitimate' apparently (no-one spoke of it) and brought up by her grandparents then by her Aunt when she married. She was close to her Aunt, Uncle and cousins, I believe. My Great-Grandmother did marry and had more children. I'm not sure my father ever knew about them. It was all kept hush-hush.
I've no idea what happened, but I suspect my Great-Grandmother was jilted at the altar as the Banns of marriage were called but the marriage never took place.

Yes, I've found out a lot of interesting facts and connections. 🙂