Found an odd gaol sentence today

[Anne in Carlisle]

This is one I'd not seen before and was a bit surprised. A distant cousin of mine married a woman in 1811 in Bedfordshire. I found she already had a child in September 1809 and the baptism (transcription) names a putative father (not my relative). So far so good and a common enough story.

The Bedfordshire Gaol records are available as transcribed summaries on the archive website and used by Ancestry as 'hints' (otherwise I wouldn't have looked!). It seems this woman was sentenced in December 1809 to one year in gaol for 'Bastardy'. I had never come across this before and it seems very harsh. The child survived to adulthood so presumably was cared for either by family or in the Workhouse.

I have seen Bastardy cases in court records before but they have always been against the putative father to make him provide for the child. Anyone else seen this harsh sentence for a mother?

Anne

[GallowayLass]

This might shed some light on it. Scroll down to criminal consequences heading. Doesn’t say much but it shows it could happen.

https://www.londonlives.org/static/Bastardy.jsp

[Anne in Carlisle]

Thanks, GL, so it was uncommon then. As far as I can determine the child was born in the mother's parish, where she married two years later and lived with her husband for at leat 8 years before moving to his parish. Later in life they were both baptised by visiting Mormon missionaries and my relative went to Utah with his adult children after the death of his wife.

Anne