I was idly 'surfing the Web' (can't remember what for now) and came across an interesting article in the FamilySearch Wiki (which I didn't know existed).
The URL is https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Bir...ily_historians.
An excerpt:
I thought this might be of interest to others as well.
Tim
The URL is https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Bir...ily_historians.
An excerpt:
Evidence strongly suggests that during the sixteenth- and much of the seventeenth-centuries, parents did indeed baptize in haste. As such, family historians working on the early modern period can usually assume that any date they uncover either in a parish register or on the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which specifies baptism will normally be no more than a week after birth. However, studies have shown than from the mid-seventeenth-century onwards the interval between birth and baptism became longer and longer. In one study, for example, in the period 1650-1700 it took 14 days before 75% of children in the register were baptized, while between 1771-89 and 1791-1812 the corresponding period was 38 and 64 days respectively. Just as importantly, the same figures for the parishes which saw the longest intervals for these three periods are 27, 155 and 444 days. A further complicating factor is the growing appearance of ‘baptism parties’ or ‘family baptisms’ in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries. In these instances parents waited to baptize all of their children in one go.
Tim
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