I am having a lot of difficulty with emails recently, this reply came in
about 8 hours before the question. In Anglesey, a lot depends upon the
village, there are notorious places that I don't wish to expand upon, except
to say that 40 years ago Anglesey had the doubtful honour of having the
village with the highest percentage of incest and illegitimate births in the
UK.
I agree with most of Ian's thoughts, he left out that before civil
registration came in some vicars would commit almost every sin in the book
to track down the father of the child being baptised and then record the
fact.
When civil registration came about in July 1837, a mother could declare the
father's name without his consent, and the Prince of Wales had many such
'children'. The registrar in Holyhead recorded these as 'putative
father'.
This was changed in 1875 by new legislation and the father had to be present
and sign the register.
To answer Kate's question, "I would also like to know how illegitimacy was
treated for recordkeeping purposes by the government. If I request a birth
certificate from the GRO, will I receive both mother and biological father's
names?" You may or may not, basically it depends upon them actually being
present in the register, if they are there you will get it. The GRO tend to
send a birth certificate with a photocopied entry imposed on it. From my own
experience you will receive more help from the local registrar, but then
they don't usually accept credit cards. I have watched the Anglesey
registrars working, many times, they are very thorough and spend as much
time as the search needs. I have always been impressed with their skills and
helpfulness (she even has a draw with spare spectacles in case you have
forgotten yours, as I did today). I would guess from my observations of the
registers that about 75% of the illegitimate births on Anglesey do not have
a father's name. In 1926 another law was enacted, retrospectively, where an
illegitimate birth can be re-registered. I have seen one where the man was
49 years old at the time!
Just hope this makes the recording of illegitimacy a little clearer, but
having all ready forgotten my reading glasses today, maybe not!
Dave Wilson
Working on the Anglesey registration indexing project.
-----Original Message-----
From: wls-anglesey-bounces(a)rootsweb.com
[mailto:wls-anglesey-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of I Thompson
Sent: 17 March 2008 15:01
To: wls-anglesey(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: [AGY] Illegitimacy
Dear Kate,
I don't think that illegitimacy was all that different then from now. I
must say that I haven't heard of 3 sisters in the same family but - as you
say - there is and was some stigma attached to illegitimacy so that these
things aren't maybe broadcast.
I think if anyone looks deeply enough into their own family there will be
illegitimate births. If you are lucky, the father will be named. Further
back, some records exist in what are called the Quarter Sessions meaning
that some fathers were chased up - a little like an early child support
agency. These records are, however, patchy as I know to my cost looking for
the father of a gt gt grandfather.
Luckily, the "folk memory" goes back a long way. So if, by the way, anyone
knows a Mynytho innkeeper of the latter half of the 19th century called
"Wil", he might be the half-brother of my gt gt grandfather Evan Solomon
Jones, and the "missing link" back to the elusive father!
Yours,
Ian
London
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