Not baptised - what are the odds?

[vikki brace]

Evening all

I am working on my (step) dads tree and I am getting rather fedup at the lack of records for them.

They seem to be registering the births, some of the marriages and I have yet to find a single baptism. They were in Whitechapel and the suround areas for decades.

I know today christenings are not hugely popular, but I always thought it was seen as the done thing in victorian England, am I wrong

[Mary from Italy]

Maybe they were RC or non-conformists?

[vikki brace]

I did wonder about that, I had a look on the non-parocical web site and nothing there.

The one marriage I have is at St Mary's, Whitechapel which was CofE in 1849

[Tom Tom]

With Whitechapel there would be lots of different churches so maybe it is just a case of finding out which one they used and then you might hit the jackpot so to speak?

I have some that don't appear to have been baptised yet all their siblings were. I can only assume they were christened somewhere else.

[Peppie]

I was reading in one of this months FH mags that only about 40% of baptisims were recorded. Don't know how true that is?

Also you are talking about a over populated part of London where I'm sure plenty of baptisims were done each day and possibly were missed out.....

(why don't we have a sad smily?)

[Little Nell]

Well Vikki

It depends on what religious denomination they were, and they may not have gone in for baptisms. It's a fallacy that Victorians were devout churchgoers.

Alternatively, living in London, there were lots of places they could have gone.

[Olde Crone Holden]

As an extremely general rule of thumb, lol, I find that my relatives who registered births in the early 1800s tended NOT to have their children baptised (or I can't find them).

The ones who didn't register the births, usually DID have the children baptised.

Don't know of 40% of baptisms going unrecorded...if they went unrecorded, how do they know it was 40%?????!!!

As has been said, they may have been RC, nonconformist, Quakers, Jewish etc, or the records of the church have not survived - many London churches were destroyed in the Blitz.

OC

[Peter Evans]

Vikki,

My experience is that my rural forebears (in Suffolk, Surrey and Herts) were almost invariably baptised but that those in C19 London were much less likely to be christened or even be married whether in church or register office. I suppose it was the anonymity of the metropolis and the looser socials ties. The only exceptions were the watermen families where church baptism was a requirement.

Peter

[Phoenix]

What period are you talking about, Vikki?
Some non conformists do not believe in baptism, others have adult baptism. Records pre 1837 may be at TNA, if they were deposited. Records post 1837 might still be with the chapel, in a local record office eg LMA or no longer existing.

Generally speaking, baptism is much later for babies in the late victorian period than it had been. In the 1790s the child would only be a few days old. By the 1890s it could be a few months or even a year or so old. That very fact must mean the act of baptism no longer had the same religious significance that it had done.

As Peter says, it is much easier to control rural parishioners. Though my Norfolk lot cause the vicar to write (I paraphrase) the child was born over a month ago and since then I have been continually urging the mother to have it baptised.

[Kit]

I have one family with 12 children. All survived to adulthood. I knew the names of the 12 but not what order they were born in. I trawled 20 years of BMD records and worked out the order. I then got the parish register of their local church to confirm what I had found.

I found number one at the right time easily. So moved on to number 2. Not there. Kept going. Only 4 or 5 of the kids were baptised but there is no reasoning for who was or wasn't. They lived in the same area, possibly the same house but I can't remember offhand. I also don't understand why children 2 and 3 weren't baptised with number 4.

[Orangeblossom]

I have a family with 8 children. Only 2 are baptised. No reasoning behind the two that are. They're the middle ones for the woman, though they are the first for the man who wasn't her husband - they pretended to be married though lol

[Little Nell]

A mystery which is echoed in my husband's lot.

His gt x 3 grandparents James and Priscilla Robins had 12 children that I know of.
The 1st 5 were baptised within a few months of their births, often within weeks.
6th child baptised aged 2 at the same time as the baby # 7.
8th is a girl who changes name between censuses and there is no record of a baptism under either name.
9th & 10th both baptised within a few weeks of birth.
#11 no baptism record at all.
12th child baptised within 2 months of her birth.

No logical pattern there at all. As for the churches
baby one baptised in a City of London church, babies 2 -5 baptised in another City church and all the other baptisms in St Leonards Shoreditch.

[JBee]

Couple of years ago I was looking up 6 baptisms c1950's and only found 5 - one was missing - must have been forgotten I think - I was trying to find the godparents but they didn't register them

[vikki brace]

Thanks everyone for your replies - sadly I don't know which donomiation they were, I am asuming they were CofE as the only marriage I have found took place in a CofE chuch.

The time period I am looking at is c1825 through to 1900s.

They are just sooooo anoying!!!!!

[Little Nell]

Well they may have married in a C of E church because one of them was C of E, but the other may have been of any denomination, or a non believer. They may have changed their religious preferences after marriage.

What information are you hoping to find from baptism, that you can't get from other sources, like certs and census?

[Olde Crone Holden]

Silly question - where are you looking?

If you are looking solely online then that does restrict you to churches which have transcribed records online.

OC