In a message dated 28/03/2003 19:23:34 GMT Standard Time, Ecrook(a)tesco.net
writes:
My friend's research shows many members of her family could
neither read or
write, in fact even up to the late 1890's some were still illiterate.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that a BMD certificate or a parish
register entry signed with an X is proof of illiteracy. There is ample
evidence to suggest that this is not so. Through the Sunday school movement
and small village schools quite a large proportion of the population in rural
Wales were able to read and write (it may not have been as high in some of
the more industrialised areas).
What seems to account for the Xs is that registrars and parish priests made
the assumption that working class people (especially the monoglot Welsh
speaking working class) couldn't write and so told them to "write an X
here".
Being use to complying with the instructions of their betters that is what
these people did, despite the fact that had the instruction been to sign
their name - they would have been perfectly able to do so.
All the best
Alwyn