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  • Social responses to illegitimate births

    Hello everyone,

    I am researching my late mother's family tree, and have so far managed quite well using online (government) birth, death, marriage and grave records in Australia. But now I need some advice please, on two separate subjects, so I am starting a new thread for each (I hope this is the best way to do it).

    It appears that one of my Great Grandfathers, living in Melbourne Australia from around 1840 - 1902, had at least three long term relationships. I have (and am still chasing up) some indications of a marriage about 1870 and another about 1900. In between, it appears (but I'm not sure) that he lived with another woman but may have never married her, and she bore him a child who was my grandmother. So this is the line I most want to trace.

    But there are difficulties. So far I have been unable to find any record of a wedding, my grandmother's birth or my great grandmother's death (my late mother told me she died soon after giving birth). Furthermore, my grandmother is not listed among the "issue" on my great grandfather's death certificate, and her marriage certificate lists her step-mother (who I'm pretty sure wasn't her birth mother). So I am having difficulty even finding out her name.

    My question is this. Does anyone here, especially Australians, have any experience in how people of the day (about 1891) dealt with births to, and deaths of, women in de facto relationships? Nowadays we don't feel much shame about these things, but I have the impression from my mother that this may have been more shameful. So I'm wondering whether the birth is likely to have been registered in the father's name or the mother's birth name, and likewise what name is likely to have been used on my mother's subsequent death certificate. So far I cannot find any records under his name, and of course I don't know her birth name.

    I realise I will have to dig around very patiently, and may never be able to resolve this, but perhaps someone has some helpful advice for me please? Thanks.

  • #2
    I don't have any Australian experience but if it was in England I would be looking for the birth under the mother's surname as well as the father's.

    We tend to think of illegitimacy as we would have done in (in my case anyway) the late 1950s and early 1960s where it was a dreadful shame on the family and the child was often adopted away from family. MANY people who have started out on their family history have been very surprised to discover that it seemed to be the norm for a bride to be pregnant at the wedding or even for the wedding to take place several years after the birth of the first children. I have examples in my tree of illegitimate children clearly being accepted into the family and remembered in wills etc.

    Do we deduce from this that the earlier Victorians were not quite as stuffy as we have thought? I don't know!

    Anne

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    • #3
      I think attitudes varied enormously. In rural areas in poorer families illegitimacy was a usual occurrence and I have examples in both Gloucestershire and Norfolk of illegitimate children being placed with their grandparents or an aunt or uncle whilst their mother worked in service.

      In families where they had pretentions to respectability and neighbours who might tut, illegitimacy would be frowned on. It was usually the mothers that bore the brunt of this of course.

      During the Victorian age there were many illegitimate children who were either definitely murdered or who died suspiciously after birth, and probably a much higher number we can't know about because the deaths were accepted as natural. Dead babies were regularly fished out of rivers, canals etc and babyfarming (where a single mother would pay for her child to be cared for - was rife. In reality the caring babyfarmer often either deliberately killed the child (those babyfarmers who were caught were hanged for murder) or the baby would die through neglect, malnourishment etc.

      As today, there was no accepted moral standard. Different people had different outlooks.

      I can say that all the illegit births I've found in my researches have been registered, though I've found they are more likely to be registered as "Male Motherssurname" or "Female Motherssurname" and I've found baptisms for them all - though one wasn't baptised till she was nearly 5. It's more likely a father's name will appear in a baptism than on a birth cert in my experience, but even likelier there's no clue.
      ~ with love from Little Nell~
      Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

      Comment


      • #4
        I'd imagine the same in Australia as England - if a couple were living together, they would pretend to be married. "Living in sin" was disgraceful, even though quite a few were doing it, lol. No one did it openly though.

        As a child living in Manchester in the 1950s and 60s, it was routine for our new neighbours to be inspected by other neighbours. If no wedding photo was visible then delicate questioning took place about when and where the couple had married. At least one woman, who had no wedding photo to display, had her marriage certificate framed and it hung on the wall!

        As for registration of an illegitimate birth, I think this depended on how bold the couple were about lying to the Registrar about whether they were married or not, and whether the question was even asked.

        OC

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        • #5
          I agree with Anne. My very ordinary ancestors lived in villages where, presumably, everybody knew your business. The girls who had illegitimate children went on to marry and raise families so no stigma there? Some kept their children with them, other children lived with grandparents/aunts or uncles and there was no secret about their origins. Although I did notice one illegitimate girl (my grandmother's half sister) invent a father for her marriage certificate, this was in 1910.

          From research in to my own family I believe that, as now, family is family and there was not a great deal of casting out of sinful daughters, although it does make for good melodrama!

          Comment


          • #6
            Someone wrote an interesting book called something like "The six degrees of illegitimacy" which listed six different types of illegitimacy and society's response to the various degrees.

            The official line though was ALWAYS severe disapproval and sometimes very punishing attitudes. Until very recently, for instance, if you were illegitimate you could not enter the church as a vicar, nor the Civil Service, nor could you get a commission in the services. I also remember as a child, another child not being allowed to be a Brownie because she was known to be illegitimate, although this was possibly pressure from other, more respectable parents......

            Rural illegitimacy was officially frowned on but very common and the illegitimate children were taken on by grandparents with little more than a cross telling-off for the mother. In my farming ancestors, it was actually encouraged - a farmer's sons needed sons to carry on the farm and it was no good him getting lumbered with a barren wife, so a couple of sons were almost required before any talk of marriage.

            In the book I refer to, the most "indulged" illegitimacy by society, was the classic poor maid at the Big house who was Done Wrong by the Master or the Master's Son. Everyone understood this and there would be little censure against the poor girl so ill-used. Call me a cynic, but if I had been a naughty girl and had been sent home to my parents in disgrace, I would be saying it was the Master's son (or my mum would be telling the neighbours it was!). I certainly wouldn't be telling my parents it was the stable lad, or a passing soldier.

            Universally loathed by all levels of society and bottom of the illegitimacy heap, was the child born of known incest. Fortunately for these poor souls, not many of them survived, usually succumbing to some mysterious ailment very early on.

            To sum up - Official attitudes to illegitimacy were those of disgusted horror. Behind closed doors though, attitudes were probably a lot softer and as long as everyone kept up the polite fiction of a late baby for "mum" aged 56, the proprieties were seen to be observed and that is all that mattered...appearances.

            OC

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            • #7
              Eric,

              I have several quite legitimate babies who were never registered in the late 1880's to 1890's at Parramatta, NSW.
              The lack of a birth certificate then wasn't a problem. When one son entered the army for WW1 his father's verification
              of his age was all that was needed.

              If you message me I could put you in touch with a friend who is very helpful, especially concerning FH in Victoria and Australia generally.

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              • #8
                Thank you everyone for some extremely interesting background information and helpful suggestions. You have given me some extra factors to consider.

                Originally posted by Little Nell View Post
                I can say that all the illegit births I've found in my researches have been registered, though I've found they are more likely to be registered as "Male Motherssurname" or "Female Motherssurname" and I've found baptisms for them all - though one wasn't baptised till she was nearly 5. It's more likely a father's name will appear in a baptism than on a birth cert in my experience, but even likelier there's no clue.
                This is useful thanks. I'm not sure if I would have thought of trying names like father's mother' name. (Unfortunately, I don't have the mother's mother's name.)

                Originally posted by Yvonne from Oz View Post
                If you message me I could put you in touch with a friend who is very helpful, especially concerning FH in Victoria and Australia generally.
                Thanks for this kind offer. I will message you.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Eric, I have several instances where children born to unmarried mothers were registered under different names - two in the mother's name with father unknown, one with the mother's mother's maiden name - that was confusing!, one with both the father's surname and the mother's name. On marriage certificates the names were sometimes different again and again on death certs! It was by trying all posssibilities that I managed to track them down on the Vic and NSW indexes. I also have two whose births were never registered but that didn't appear to be a problem for them. In both instances it was the death certs which gave information about where they were born.

                  It was suggested to me that it wasn't unusual in remote rural areas mid 1800s for pioneer settler couples to have a child or children some years before marriage as they may not have had access to ministers who could perform the marriages.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Eric Hatfield View Post
                    This is useful thanks. I'm not sure if I would have thought of trying names like father's mother' name.
                    Eric, You've misunderstood what Nell was saying there. She meant that an illegitimate child was more likely to be registered with its mother's surname than its father's. In fact it couldn't be registered with its father's surname unless he went in person to the Register Office.

                    My great-grandmother in NSW had 10 children. The first 6 were registered with her husband's surname, and he was named as the father. He was definitely the father of the first one, and possibly of the next three, but not the last two of these six (in fact she had the birth certificate of the last one changed to read "illegitimate" some years later). She then went on to have four more children, all of whom were registered as illegitimate, with no father's name on the certificate, although she was living with their father, gave them his surname as their middle name, and later married him. Her second and third marriages were bigamous, and her first husband also remarried bigamously. So as you can see, there were no hard and fast rules about how illegitimate children were registered.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Sunny Kate View Post
                      Eric, I have several instances where children born to unmarried mothers were registered under different names - two in the mother's name with father unknown, one with the mother's mother's maiden name - that was confusing!, one with both the father's surname and the mother's name. On marriage certificates the names were sometimes different again and again on death certs! It was by trying all posssibilities that I managed to track them down on the Vic and NSW indexes. I also have two whose births were never registered but that didn't appear to be a problem for them.
                      Yes, I can see this is going to be a challenge - but so far I'm enjoying it, and having a great time learning new things about genealogy generally and my family in particular.

                      In both instances it was the death certs which gave information about where they were born.
                      In my case, I have not yet been able to get her death certificate as she died in 1981, and the online NSW BDM records stop at 1979 (and for reasons I can't go into, I can't get them directly ..... yet, at any rate). But this is clearly one of my best hopes.

                      It was suggested to me that it wasn't unusual in remote rural areas mid 1800s for pioneer settler couples to have a child or children some years before marriage as they may not have had access to ministers who could perform the marriages.
                      I can imagine that's true. But in my case, they lived in inner-city Melbourne. If my great grandparents were indeed not married (which my mother, before she died, told me she suspected) then it is uncertain what lengths if any they went to to disguise the fact. In fact I don't even know if my great grandmother dying after childbirth is true, or a convenient story told to my grandmother as a child, to "get rid of" someone disrespectable.

                      Mary, thanks for your clarification and additional information. I can see it is true that "there were no hard and fast rules about how illegitimate children were registered", and I will likely have to play the detective a bit more yet!

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                      • #12
                        Eric, I have found quite a few illegitimates in my family tree in Australia.

                        1. One appeared twice in the index....registered under the mother's name, then again under the father (this was in Perth, in 1899. In fact, his father did not marry his wife (a different woman) until two more children were born and both of those were registered under their mother's name. The first child mentioned seems to have been known to his half siblings as he claimed some of them as NOK during war service.

                        2. In another instance, the unwed mother travelled from her home in Stawell Victoria to give birth to a daughter in Perth in 1905. The child was registered under the mother's name but placed in a Children's Home, under a name that seemed to be a scrambled version of the mother's name. The mother then married a member of my family in Perth about six months later and subsequently returned to Victoria without the child, who was placed for adoption.

                        3. My ggmother may have been a 'trigamist'....except I have not yet been able to find proof of her marriage to my ggfather. In her second round of relationships, she gave birth to two children, both of whom were registered under their father's name, but one, who was stillborn, had the death registered under the mother's name derived from her first marriage. In her third round of relationships, all children bore their father's name, although I have found no registration at all for the three eldest.(1888-1893)

                        My impression is that in Western Australia, at least, in the 1800s, life in country areas was difficult, legitimising relationships not always easy and a blind eye often turned. The shortage of women probably had an impact as well, especially among working people, but even further 'up the chain', I suspect the shame factor did not become strong until the 1950s.

                        I went to school with a girl who was born as a result of a wartime liaison between her mother and a Yank. The circumstances were known in my town and the mother, a successful businesswoman, was always treated with respect, as was her child.

                        Beverley



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                        • #13
                          I think that if the couple acted respectfully then a lack of marriage may have been overlooked. Of course they may have told people that they married elsewhere.

                          Why don't you check with NSW BDM exactly what you need to do to obtain the death cert? I can't see them checking too hard. You will be applying for a real certificate, not a family history certificate, btw. If you say your mother's generation is dead then do they consider you to be the next of kin? If yes you can apply for the cert. I wouldn't mention any aunts/uncles you have that may still be alive.
                          Kit

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                          • #14
                            Eric................

                            I have a fair few Australian illegitimate children in my tree. A fair percentage were never registered, including my own mother in 1928.

                            My great uncle had a son born outside wedlock in 1906. He was registered 3 times......once under his father's surname, once under his mother's, then a year later under his mother's husband's name........all certs gave the correct father, so not sure why all that happened.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Hello everyone,

                              I've come back to this discussion with a new problem I hope someone has some ideas on please.

                              I'm now researching my wife's family in Aberdeenshire, and have an interesting problem determining (actually, it looks like being more like guessing) who was the father of one of my wife's ancestors. After getting a lot of documents off Scotland's People and checking out census data on Ancestry, here is what I know (I have documentation for most matters):
                              • Elspet Moir was born about 1833 in Methlick, Aberdeenshire.
                              • In 1852 she married John Sangster and about 1855 Elsie Sangster was born in Foveran, Aberdeenshire.
                              • In the 1861 census, Elsie is living with Elspet's parents, presumably John has died (can't confirm) or they have separated. I can find no record of any further marriage for Elspet.
                              • In 1859 Jane Stephen was born to Elspet. The father was named as Thomas Stephen but the documentation says "illegitimate".
                              • In 1862 Thomas Henry Stephen Moir was born to Elspet in Aberdeen, again "illegitimate", but this time no father was named. This is my wife's ancestor, so knowing the father is important.
                              • In 1863 Mary Ann Henry Moir was born to Elspet in Aberdeen, again illegitimate and no father, but a subsequent "Register of Corrected Entries" shows that after a court hearing, Francis Henry was named as father.
                              • In 1866, Jane Moir was born to Elspet in Aberdeen, again illegitimate, no father named, no middle name to give any clue.
                              • The 1881 census shows Elspet living in Aberdeen with Thomas, Mary Ann and Jane Moire all of appropriate ages, so obviously the same family despite the spelling.
                              • Some Ancestry trees have Elspet dying in Aberdeen in 1891, but I can find no record of this.
                              • When Thomas married in 1891, and at his death in 1935, he is named as Thomas Stephen (no mention of Henry or Moir). Thomas Stephen (Snr) and Elspet Moir/Sangster are named as his parents, both deceased at the time of the marriage.

                              On the surface then, both Thomases are my wife's ancestors. But there is the curious fact that Thomas Jr has the full name at birth of Thomas Henry Stephen Moir, and one year later Mary Ann Henry Moir was judged to have been fathered by Francis Henry. It seems as if Elspet wanted to include the fathers' names in the children's names, was having an each-way bet on who Thomas's father was.

                              So, can anyone advise me please .....

                              1. Would the names have been her choice, or would the Registrar then have taken it on himself to give the names to reflect his view of parentage? (That may sound a silly question, but those times were very paternalistic.)
                              2. Were people free to shrug off names they didn't want, and revert from Thomas Henry Stephen Moir to Thomas Stephen if it suited them?
                              3. Would the paternity court case have resulted in maintenance, if not, what would have been Elspet's purpose in pursuing it? There being no DNA evidence in those days, would the decision have been based on her word alone?
                              4. Does anyone have any other ideas on how I may resolve this conundrum please?

                              Thank you again.

                              Comment


                              • #16
                                Originally posted by Eric Hatfield View Post
                                But in my case, they lived in inner-city Melbourne.
                                Hi Eric

                                Melbourne was founded about 1836-37 and in the first years, there was not much of "Inner City Melbourne"! My Coles arrived in the 1840s and it was a pretty rough pioneer town then. Up until 1851 it was part of NSW and you will find the bdm/baptisms/burials, in NSW indexes (which are free on-line) as well as the Vic bdms. The newspapers, online from the 1840s are a great source of information about all kinds of things. If a couple lived together and had a child, pretending they were married, maybe they might have put a birth notice in the paper for their friends ? or an obituary might reveal some interesting snippets ?


                                Di
                                Diane
                                Sydney Australia
                                Avatar: Reuben Edward Page and Lilly Mary Anne Dawson

                                Comment


                                • #17
                                  Hi Eric
                                  Sorry I can't help, I don't have any Scottish ancestors.
                                  However, it may be a good idea to start a new thread for this query.
                                  Lynne

                                  Searching for Ford, Duffy, (Manchester and Ireland) Cree (Manchester, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire), Owen (Manchester), Humphreys (Manchester and Ireland), Egerton (Manchester and Cheshire), Cresswell (Manchester).

                                  Comment


                                  • #18
                                    Eric - just to answer one of your questions (and it doesn't help much), people can call themselves by any name they like so long as its not for fraudulent purposes. This is still the same today.

                                    I am not in the least surprised that it looks as if Thomas reduced the number of his names. He would do it because he found it easier; or because he was concerned about his paternity; or because his mother told him something; or because he just preferred to be called that.

                                    I love the idea of his mother hedging her bets about who was the father! It was quite common in those days to give the father's surname as a middle name. I have one called Anne Peck Oliver. Ms Oliver married Mr Peck six months later.

                                    Anne

                                    Comment


                                    • #19
                                      To answer (3). Yes, a court case should have resulted in maintenance although whether the father paid it or not is another question.

                                      The court would decide whether she was telling the truth and whether he was telling the truth. These maintenance hearings were pretty lurid and often the hapless woman was required to give all the sordid details of time and place etc. The intention was to humiliate the woman.

                                      It was the custom until fairly recently for the young man to bring along several of his friends, who would swear that they had also enjoyed the young woman's charms and therefore no maintenance would be awarded.

                                      I lived in the Scottish borders in the early 1960s and this custom was still going on until a local magistrate, fairly fed up of all this, told all the young men that as they had ALL enjoyed the young woman's favours, they could ALL pay ten bob a week towards the maintenance of the child. Uproar ensued of course and then the magistrate said that they would all be done for perjury, should they wish to withdraw their statements!

                                      OC

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                                      • #20
                                        Justice seen to be done.
                                        Uncle John - Passed away March 2020

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