Puzzle : Birth Records under two different Surnames.

[Beaver13]

Sometime ago I was searching on the FreeBMD website for the birth record of a child whose parents were unmarried.  When the result appeared, I clicked on the page number of the volume.  This takes you to another webpage on which is recorded all the children who were born in that same Quarter and in the same Registration District.

This child had an extremely unusual combination of forenames and they appeared at the bottom of a list of about ten children.  The child was clearly listed under the surname of its mother.

I was just about to leave this webpage when I noticed that the same unusual combination of forenames appeared near the top of the list – but with a different surname.  As the double entry also appeared on the original images, I concluded that this was due to an error on the part of the Registrar.

However, I found an almost identical case last week, also in relation to a child born to unmarried parents in 1871.

I mentioned this in the Chatroom a few night’s ago and two of those present had had the same experience, but nobody appeared able to offer an explanation.

Can anyone provide an answer to this puzzle – for example, was it the surname of the unknown father, or could it be something to do with an adoption, agreed before the birth and the surnames ‘transferred’ during or after the ceremony?

Any help would be deeply appreciated!

[jorose]

Remember that the birth certificate has no actual box labelled 'surname of child'.  What you have are the name of the father, and the name of the mother (in some cases, multiple surnames for her; married name, previous married name and maiden name, but in the case of your illegitimate child, probably only her maiden name).  In the case of a child born in wedlock it's pretty easy to see which surname you should use - but if there are both the father and the mother listed, but the child is illegitimate, it gets a bit more tricky.

So whoever was composing the index at the time decided to list the child under both names for completeness, perhaps?  Or they went through doing the indexing twice, and the first time the person doing it looked at the birth certificate and decided to use the father's surname.  The person going through doublechecking the details thought it should go under the mother's surname.

There was probably some rule they were supposed to follow in these situations, but you know what they say about 'close enough for government work'.

[Beaver13]

Thank you very much indeed, jorose.  I am most grateful for the explanation.