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Registering a birth

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  • Registering a birth

    Sorry if this is a late night daft question, but what is the likelihood of a couple registering a birth of a child who isn't theirs, which they have informally adopted?

    Or say for example the child is biologically one of theirs - probably easier for the father, than the mother. Would a midwife need to confirm the birth?

    BTW we're talking 1872.

    Or am I grasping at straws to solve a very big conundrum...

  • #2
    Velma

    As with ALL human conditions, anything is possible! However, in 1872, it was still not compulsory for parents to reister the birth of a child, it was the Registrar's responasibility to seek them out.

    Having found them, they could indeed lie. I have one in my family where the "parents" were actually uncle and aunt to the child, according to the birth cert. The baptism however tells a different tale, that the child is the illegitimate offspring of the uncle's sister. So yes, at least one person in the history of time has lied to the Registrar...but not to the Vicar......this was in the 1860s, by the way.

    OC

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    • #3
      Thanks OC

      I'm still on the same mystery why a contact's grandmother and my grandmother look so alike when I cannot find a biological connection - I'm beginning to think that somebody hasn't been exactly truthful on official records.

      I'll have to seek out the local PRs...

      BTW it's Yalding, Kent, if anyone has access... ;)

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      • #4
        My father registered my birth "by declaration" which meant it was at the local register office, not the one where I was born. He didnt' have to take any proof. I don't recall having to provide any when I registered my elder son, nor my husband when he registered our younger son.

        Not sure if in the light of identity fraud and terrorist threat that they do ask for evidence. But what evidence anyway?

        Years ago one of my uncles died without making a Will. His surviving brothers including my father, had to go to a solicitor to swear they were related to him and I had to go and swear they were too. Solicitor charged us £5 each to hear the oath. But I don't recall us having to PROVE what we swore. Bureaucratic tosh!
        ~ with love from Little Nell~
        Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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        • #5
          I know of a case where this happened in the late 1940's. Wife feared childbirth. Her unmarried sister had a baby - the couple took the child from birth and shortly afterwards moved away to a different county.
          They visited grandma from time to time and as the boy got older, people began to comment that he was the spitting image of the "uncle" bringing him up.
          I have looked up his birth reg and he appears in the index only once, in the actual quarter of his birth, but is registered in the surname of the couple who took him after the birth. MMN is the surname shared by the wife (prior to her marriage) and by the unmarried sister, who gave birth to the boy. I suspect that if I bought the certificate, the forename given for mother would be that of the married sister, rather than the unmarried one who'd given birth to him.

          Jay
          Janet in Yorkshire



          Genealogists never die - they just swap places in the family tree

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          • #6
            Do you think it was his then Janet? Do you know the truth through family stories? If it wasn't for that 'inside information' you would be none the wiser and automatically think the child was theirs, wouldn't you?

            We registered our children's births (2001 & 2003) in the hospital where thery were born. The registrar visited several times a week and had a list of all the babies born there with their parents' names and addresses etc.

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            • #7
              The general consensus of opinion at the time was that the baby was the child of the husband and his unmarried sister-in-law.
              The wife wanted a child, but feared pregnancy and childbirth - so her sister, who already had one illegitimate child, "obliged" by arrangement.
              At that time, at least one of the parents had to go to the Registrar's office to register the birth - it would have been very easy for the husband to go. All he needed to change was the forename of the mother,mmn, dob and pob (local small hospital) would be correct.
              In later years, the wife actually told people of the "dreadful" time she'd had, giving birth, and that was why they'd only had the one child.

              (It's a very small community, where your neighbour always knows your business as well as they know their own! Or they did at that time.)

              Jay
              Janet in Yorkshire



              Genealogists never die - they just swap places in the family tree

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