Missing Birth Registration

[rkic]

I have recently found this forum and have already picked up several useful tips while lurking which have helped my researches. I wonder whether anyone can help me with this problem.

My grandfather Charles Gayton was aged 5 in the 1881 census (RG11 0346/27 page 32) shown as born Clerkenwell and living there with his parents, Edmund Gayton and Caroline Gayton (nee Hart). However I can’t find a birth registration for him in the GRO index under Gayton or Hart.

Edmund and Caroline are shown as husband and wife in the census but appear to have actually married Dec qtr 1884 in St Saviours, Southwark, which would have been far enough away from their actual residence to avoid comment from the neighbours. lol. The marriage happened in the same quarter as the death of Edmund’s mother, Ann, which might be an explanation for the delay. Edmund’s first wife, Emma, died in 1871 and so wouldn’t have been a hindrance and Caroline does not appear to have married before.

Charles was their only child so I wonder whether he could have been adopted.

I would be grateful for any thoughts on possible avenues for research

Robert

[Little Nell]

I'm wondering why the child was originally recorded as Martha which was crossed out with Charles written over the top?

I can't find anything either.

If Charles was adopted, there wouldn't be any official records either, since legal adoption didn't become possible till 1927. And if he was adopted, he might have been born with a completely different name.

[rkic]

I assumed that the Martha/Charles was an error transcribing the information onto the return, although it could explain why Grandad always looked grumpy!

I've no evidence that he was adopted but it would explain why he doesn't appear in the index.

Thanks for checking

Robert

[KiteRunner]

How do you know Caroline's maiden name was Hart? Is it just from the marriage you've found?

[KiteRunner]

Don't know if you have already realised, but Clerkenwell wasn't a registration district by the time Charles would have been born. It appears to have been replaced with Holborn. The only Gayton birth reg I can see at Holborn about the right time is a Benjamin John, though. (Jun quarter 1875). And there are lots of Harts, but the only Charles is a William Charles Hart Jun 1876.

[rkic]

I've quite a bit of information from two of my late aunts about Caroline including her own notes on the birth and christening dates of her siblings and her in memoriam card giving her maiden name.

[rkic]

I did look wider afield for an entry on the basis that Caroline might have given birth elsewhere. One problem is that I don't know when Edmund and Caroline started co-habiting. They weren't together on the 1871 census, indeed I haven't managed to locate her for that census.

Robert

[rkic]

By the way Benjamin's death was registered Sep qtr 1876 in Holborn.

Robert

[Christine in Herts]

There is a "Charlie HARF", whose birth is registered 1877 Sep-Q Whitechapel 1c-301. The index is type-printed at that stage, so (almost certainly) a transcription from an older index. I have had a Charles appearing in such a page as "Charlee", so it's not difficult to imagine "Hart" appearing as "Harf" - especially as that's the only incidence of that surname for UK results on Ancestry. (There appear to be two more, but one is a garbled surname, and the other is the Medical Registers, opening at surnames starting with E.)

It might be worth putting in for the cert, but with a checking point such as "father's name Edmund (or variant/similar)". Other's who've actually done that might care to advise?

Christine

[rkic]

Thanks for the suggestion Christine. FreeBMD have got Annie Harf in Whitechapel June Q1882 but it could be a similar error as there are a lot of Harts.

Robert

[Christine in Herts]

My thought was that, since these indexes would have been sourced from handwritten records, a lower-case t and a lower-case f look very similar.

Christine