Attitudes to baseborn children

[Jessie 888]

This is more of a general query about the social history of the second half of the nineteenth-century, I suppose. I'm rather puzzled about the conflicting attitudes to baseborn children as we seem to have more than our fair share in my family tree!

One lady, for example, Louisa Gregor (1852-1947), had three baseborn children and never married. They were initially passed off as her mother's but later openly recorded as Louisa's.

Another lady, Susan Gregor (1854-1913), had eight baseborn children, etc.

(About three others in the family, had a baseborn child clearly named after the father who they married soon after. Fair enough ... just a bit of jumping the gun!)

I don't suppose there is any way of finding out who the fathers were of the earlier ladies?! What was the most common reason of so many baseborn children? (Apart from the obvious!!) The romantic in me would like to believe it was some kind of a long-standing affair but I'm beginning to think a couple of them might have been 'working girls'?! Or, far worse, some kind of family abuse. Generally speaking, if a lady had a baseborn child would they have been stigmatised or was it so common it was ignored? Would it have deterred a man from ever marrying them in future? Sorry to pose such a stupid question but it's been bugging me!

[Megan Roberts]

I don't think that there was any hard and fast rule.

I have one lady who had 4 children but never married. She was in and out of the workhouse until her daughter left Pembrokeshire and went to Merseyside, married, and then she followed and remained there until the end of her life. I have suspicions that her children all had the same father, possibly someone from a "higher station in life", particularly considering that she herself was illegitimate, and if I am correct in my conclusions so was her father! She may well have been stigmatised in Pembrokeshire, because all would know her history, but the workhouse would take her in whenever she required it to do so, baptised her children, and so although it might not have been first choice it can't have been that bad. Also I quite sure that she would have found it difficult to get work as a servant or similar with no one to look after her small children.

My gt grandfather was born in 1845 the son of man living with his uncle's widow, and his uncle's children. They could not marry because the church forbade it, but the lived together until she died in old age. She is buried alone in a churchyard not generally associated with the family, so whether this was another form of stigmatisation, we can only guess.

I have seen no evidence that having an illegitimate child counted against a woman's chances of marriage later on - I think that it must depend on the prospective husband. My grandmother had an illegitimate son aged about 4 when she married my grandfather in the 1920s. The child kept his mother's maiden name, but my father said that his older brother was treated exactly the same as he was by my grandfather.

I am sure that there will be others who will say that the child had to be abandoned for a marriage to take place.

[emmteeyess]

This is more of a general query about the social history of the second half of the nineteenth-century, I suppose. I'm rather puzzled about the conflicting attitudes to baseborn children as we seem to have more than our fair share in my family tree!

I started a related post here - https://www.british-genealogy.com/thr...r-observations.... - and the parish register I was looking at had about 25% baseborn births (I say about, not a mathematical calculation!)

My ggg.grandma had at least 3 children 'out of wedlock' and never seems to have married. On her son's 1st marriage certificate his mother's name is given in the space for 'Father's Name' and 'his' occupation is given as Single Woman.
At least by the time of his 2nd marriage my gg.grandfather knew who his father was and named him on the 2nd marriage certificate.

My guess is that baseborn was not as shamefull as we might have expected - a bit like nowadays!

Cheers, MTS

[Jessie 888]

Thank you for the thoughtful replies ... they both reinforced what I was thinking too.

I think not knowing who the fathers were in my family is just going to be one of those things that will keep bugging me but I'll never know. Oh for a time machine!

[Wilkes_ml]

There is a very interesting booklet "A McLaughlin Guide to ILLEGITIMAGY" which I have only just re-discovered accidentally hidden amongst some old magazines...it is very informative and discusses the several degrees of illegitimacy entitled "some Bastards are more equal than others" and their perception by the general public

1) The child of a couple who were going steady and intended to marry at the first opportunity (or where the man died before the wedding or deserted at the last minute)
2) The child of a stable relationship relationship where the couple can not (or will not) marry for valid reasons ( mad wife, deserting husband, religion) {Jane Eyre?? style}
3) The children of a rich man's mistress
4) The product of a casual seduction of a respectable young girl
5) the children of a poor man's steady mistress
6) the children of a prostitute or promiscuous amatuer {whatever that means?}
7) The child of a married woman by another man
8) the child of incest

I think the last one is the saddest of all, as it is not the poor girls fault that she is molested by a family member, and certainly not the childs.

I do wonder if the parentage of foundlings were known, what percentage came from which category?

[Wilkes_ml]

Out of my own family history, I have a fair few illegitimate children born to ancestors and their siblings. The ones that stand out the most is the more recent ones i.e. the parents/grand parents of my own grandmother & step-grandmother.

My grandmother refused to even believe that her grandfather was born illegitimately to a widowed woman, even though the woman went on to marry the boy's father and have more children by him.

My step-grandmother disowned my half-sister for simply enquiring about her parantage and delving into the family history...simply because of the fact that the eldest daughter had a child whilst young and this child was passed off as the her mother's youngest child, something that occured a lot, but was shameful to those born at the turn of the last century.

Finding the father's can be extremely difficult unless the mother married very soon after the birth. Sometimes you may be very lucky and find a bastardy bond , examination or affiliation...I haven't been that lucky yet

A very strange illegitimate birth I came across in my family, was the birth of Frank RUFUS son of Edmond WILDMAN, a married painter with wife and children. Franks' mother Ann RUFUS was living with the Wildman family whilst heavily pregnant in 1851. Ann married someone else in 1854, and died in 1857. Frank is living with his father and the Wildman family in 1861, but listed as an "orphan", so although the family accepted him, they didn't like him to be known as Edmund's son.

[Wilkes_ml]

I have seen no evidence that having an illegitimate child counted against a woman's chances of marriage later on - I think that it must depend on the prospective husband.

I agree, after seeing a woman described as a whore in the parish registers in the 1700s when baptising her illegitimate child, followed by her marriage a couple of years later. A woman having several illegitimate children didn't neccessarily mean she was a prostitute, just that she was unmarried and either in a longstanding relationship but unable to marry, or one who enjoyed a few flings. I would have thought that babies from prostitutes were the one less likely to survive more than an hour or more, but I could be wrong there.

[Jessie 888]

There is a very interesting booklet "A McLaughlin Guide to ILLEGITIMAGY" which I have only just re-discovered accidentally hidden amongst some old magazines...it is very informative and discusses the several degrees of illegitimacy entitled "some Bastards are more equal than others" and their perception by the general public

That's a great title ... and a useful list for me to consider. Many thanks!

[Wilkes_ml]

I have only come across one incident in my research where the illegitimate child was seemingly not included when the mother married. He appeared to live with his grandparents until he reached 16-17, then went to sea. When he finally married and had a family, he moved 100s of miles away from the rest of the family. Of course, many legitimate children also did this, so it is hard to say whether he was intentially abandoned by his mother due to her marriage.

[thewideeyedowl]

This is an interesting thread, but difficult to answer because much depends on attitudes/opinions and anecdotes, rather than hard facts. (And many many thanks,Wilkes_mi, for info about the McLaughlin Illegitimacy booklet #5.)

First, I think that attitudes can depend on class and education. In the 19th century, the minister who would record the baptisms would have been educated and middle class, whereas the mothers from ag lab families or the workhouse were likely to have little or no education, most probaby could not write and at best had only rudimentary reading skills. If the minister looked down on them (and their morals) then a child born out of/before wedlock was 'baseborn'. Sniff, sniff... Years ago, I saw a Victorian cartoon - (Where? possibly reproduced in Punch?) - where a young country girl is getting married and a neighbour comments something like this: "And 'er not pregnant! That's posh!"

The 'class' thing seems to have played a big part in my Somerset farming line. A great-great-grandmother, b1812, is recorded as 'single woman', when she bore her first child, Amelia, to her future husband in 1833; and in 1837 their second child was baptised only three months after the wedding. Now what is interesting here is that gg-grandmother was the daughter of a Somerset miner who could not write, and my gg-grandfather, b 1794, was a yeoman farmer, overseer of the poor, and registered elector. Socially, these two were poles apart. I think - but cannot prove - that my gg-grandmother was considered 'not good enough' for the family and a marriage was strenuously opposed. But eventually, they wed and I would like to think that it was a love-match, because they had another five children. In his will, my gg-grandfather makes specific provision for 'my daughter Amelia'. He died in 1869 and gg-grandmother took over running the household until her own death in 1883.

Well, that is just opinion and anecdote, but this thread gives much to think about when trying to interpret a few words from long ago.

Owl