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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Davedrave on Saturday 27 March 21 09:15 GMT (UK)
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Whilst trying to discover the relationship of the sister-in-law who was the informant present at the death of my 2x great grandmother, I found something slightly odd. Eliza Bentley died in 1914, probably in Main Street, Thurmaston (her address in the 1911 Census). The informant was Ann Bentley. In 1911 Ann was living with Daniel Allott, wife Rosetta (and children) in Main Street. She is “single” and “mother-in-law”, aged 69.
Ann was living in Thurmaston in 1881, unmarried, with daughters Emily (21), Rosetta (9) and son George (2).
In 1871 she was living (with her daughter Emily) with her unmarried sister Jane and her two children (Emily, 8 and William, 1).
I know it is pretty common for a single woman to have the odd child outside marriage, but often the mother subsequently marries someone. But three children over a span of 19 years?
(Next door in 1871 were Ann’s and Jane’s parents William Bentley and Sarah (nee Allott). The other side were the parents of Eliza Bentley, nee Hurst.)
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My 3x great aunt Hannah Eden had 4 illegitimate children over a 10 year period between 1828 and 1838. I have traced the family through censuses etc and she never married. The vicar who filled in the baptism register helpfully noted the father of the first two. When I investigated him turns out he was already married.
Carolyn
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I have a similar instance. Married in 1897, by 1901 husband has either deserted her or she threw him out. Newspaper reports see him up before the beak on numerous occasions as drunk and disorderly. 1911 first child born in workhouse infirmary, registered under mothers maiden name, 1916 a second child ‘born in a hop pickers hut’ , mother returns to home parish where the child is baptised. 1919 a third child born outside of home parish again in a workhouse infirmary...and all this despite the woman’s mother helping raise the first two children. Mother appears to be travelling about in order to find work, by 1921 she disappears from records. Did she have more children ? Quite likely given her previous history.
I have another, mid 1880’s. Three children all born out of wedlock, but their mother went on to run a grocery store, later a chicken farm, remained single, and died leaving enough money to warrant leaving a will. Was the father not free to marry, did the children have different fathers? Were they supporting the mother?
Two women with very different life experiences.
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I have a lady who had four children between 1913 and 1921, believed to be different fathers. She married in late 1925 and had four more children between 1925 and 1932.
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I have an ancestor in Wootton, Berkshire who had 3 illegitimate children inbetween 1822 and 1832, she then moved into Oxford. Maybe one day if I did a common DNA test for autosomal, I may find out who the father/s were. So it is quite common to find a lady having several baseborn children over a several year period.
Another ancestor in London was born in 1835 and I think she was an illegitimate grandchild, as the supposed mother was 51 at the time, and I think she was her grandmother. The child had a middle name that was of her much older sister Emma. Emma herself had 4 subsequent illegitimate children, and she lied on the birth certs. She was in poverty so maybe was a lady of the night at times. Or she received financial support from an unknown man. His surname may have been Gore as one of her children had Gore as a middle name.
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Whilst trying to discover the relationship of the sister-in-law who was the informant present at the death of my 2x great grandmother, I found something slightly odd. Eliza Bentley died in 1914, probably in Main Street, Thurmaston (her address in the 1911 Census). The informant was Ann Bentley. In 1911 Ann was living with Daniel Allott, wife Rosetta (and children) in Main Street. She is “single” and “mother-in-law”, aged 69.
Ann was living in Thurmaston in 1881, unmarried, with daughters Emily (21), Rosetta (9) and son George (2).
In 1871 she was living (with her daughter Emily) with her unmarried sister Jane and her two children (Emily, 8 and William, 1).
I know it is pretty common for a single woman to have the odd child outside marriage, but often the mother subsequently marries someone. But three children over a span of 19 years?
(Next door in 1871 were Ann’s and Jane’s parents William Bentley and Sarah (nee Allott). The other side were the parents of Eliza Bentley, nee Hurst.)
My grandmother & grandfather had 4 children between 1912 & 1922 but did not marry until 1934 roughly 6 months after the death of his first wife. She had refused to give him a divorce.
There are many reasons for a person not to get married, even being the child of an unhappy marriage can turn some off the idea.
Cheers
Guy
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My great grandmother had at least two illegitimate children in the early 1860s. The two I know about both died in infancy, but I suspect there may be more.
She married on Boxing Day 1868, when she was already pregnant, and had a son early in 1869. In June 1875, she had fraternal twins, whom DNA testing now shows to have been fathered by someone from a neighbouring village.
Plus ça change and all that.
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Years ago when preparing a family tree for a friend I found that one of her ancesters had numerous illegimate children - from memory at least 6.
The children were generally deposited with other members of her family at the time of the census who in contrast had few children. They were never seen as a group in any census. The ancester was often in the workhouse, never married and there was no sign of a partner
Kay
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I have a Scottish relative with 3 children and no marriages.
Scottish records helpfully refer to the children by their reputed birthfathers surnames or as middle names sometimes and DNA has proved the connection in two cases .
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My great great grandmother Ann Davies, single had SIX illegitimate children in 1847, 1849, 1855, 1858, 1864 and 1867.
Because of the gaps, we wondered if this was the result of three different relationships, or if she just slept around and that there would be unaccounted for, deceased ones inbetween (even if registered, would be hard to find amongst all the Davies-Davies births).
One theory is that her youngest, my great-grandfather William, was actually a son of his eldest sister Margaret before her marriage - they were close: he lived with her after her marriage and afterwards next door, we knew descendants of her legitimate children but none from the siblings inbetween her and William.
Our thinking was that saved Margaret's shame but one more base birth to Ann (by then past 40) would be unremarkable.
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I believe I`ve already answered this question, so this may be a duplication!
My gt gt grandmother Margaret Milson had 6 illegitimate children. The first, Robert was born November 1859 nad was buried at 5 days; the youngest child Lilly was born in 1873.
My gt grand mother Alice, as far as I know was the only one with a known father. In fact she was brought up by him and his wife whom he married when Alice was 4. I don`t know what happened to Alice in her first 4 years, but her father was living with her and her family when he died.
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A great-aunt had 2 illegitimate children; she worked (I believe) at the 'big house' and one was possibly the son of either the owner or one of HIS 3 sons. Her mother looked after the bairns (they were Scottish) while my Gt aunt continued to work (evidenced by censuses). Earlier, her sister had given birth to an illegitimate child but moved away to have it and, as far as we can see, didn't return home. I think that it was almost 'reasonably normal' for this to happen and they didn't seem to have the hang-ups that there were in the early 20th century.
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I don't think it was so unusual... having researched my ancestry I have found sisters of direct ancestors who had several children outside of marriage and never went onto get married.
Even my great grandparents who claimed to be married on census but I could never find their marriage record and they had 5 children eventually I found they had married some 18 yrs after their last child was born, so all their 5 children were illegitimate
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I found one who had two sons in the 1840's and never married. At the time I thought it was unusual that far back. Managed to trace the father for one but not the other who died young.
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My great grandmother had at least two illegitimate children in the early 1860s. The two I know about both died in infancy, but I suspect there may be more.
She married on Boxing Day 1868, when she was already pregnant, and had a son early in 1869. In June 1875, she had fraternal twins, whom DNA testing now shows to have been fathered by someone from a neighbouring village.
Plus ça change and all that.
Was she still with her husband when she became pregnant with the twins?
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I have a lady who had four children between 1913 and 1921, believed to be different fathers. She married in late 1925 and had four more children between 1925 and 1932.
A lady ? was she ? :o
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I am finding that it is not at all unusual.
My 2xg grand aunt Mary Ann Holden never married and worked as housekeeper to a Mr Ward for over 30 years. Between 1867 and 1875 five children were registered with her surname. Interestingly, four of the children have Ward as one of their middle names. On census returns the children variously have the surname Holden or Ward. Mary Ann never assumes the name Ward and is always recorded as housekeeper.
Meanwhile..... Mrs Ward is always lodging or working nearby. In 1881 she is just a few houses away. One can only wonder as to what pleasantries were exchanged between Miss Holden and Mrs Ward if they chanced to pass in the street.
Tony.
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I have an ancestor, Mary, who had 5 or 6 children out of wedlock, the first three had the same father’s name on their birth certificates. Having said this her son, my ancestor did not name a father on his marriage certificate and alternated between surnames. DNA research has proved that the man on his birth certificate was indeed his Father. The births of the later children were not registered.
When I researched the family further I found that Mary was one of three surviving daughters. The other two daughters both had families but neither married their partners which to me seems fairly unusual in 1840s/50s London.
Recently I managed to find some court records which revealed that Mary’s Mother had been a victim of domestic violence and appeared to have fled to London to escape her husband. That gave a very different slant on why those three sisters had never married and had all had multiple illegitimate children.
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Through DNA I have linked to a family with many people who do not know who their biological father or grandfather is. I wonder how many men there are out there with illegitimate children. The women are left with the children and the men are free.
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There are 2 factors at play here:
1. Lack of contraception.
2. The difficulty, and cost, of divorce.
Many couples just lived together, because one or other was still legally married, and divorce wasn't an option.
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I found " :Joe Smith " in Lincolnshire was illegitimate, as was his mother" Rosie Smith" who married another man a few years later so presumably not the father.
Joe was brought up by his step father "Brown" and used his surname for his marriage and for his children.
Two missing generations of males.
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In 1801 my ancestor Mildred (Amelia) Wickham was born in Twineham, Sussex to an unwed mother born 1779 in Bolney. The mother never married as far as I know but she seems to vanish off the radar sometime afterwards. Maybe she did marry, or she emigrated.
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I also found a child who was recorded on the parish records as born illegitimately, but his parents married soon afterwards. The family that descends from this boy , 4 generations, all have the mother`s surname as their surname.
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An unexpected pregnancy often lead to a shotgun wedding but if the father was already married, the mother was often stumped. Or if the father ran away the moment he found out he was to become a father and emigrated to America or Australia leaving the mother up a creek without a paddle.
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I wonder how many men there are out there with illegitimate children.
Some get to be prime minister ... :D :D
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I wonder how many men there are out there with illegitimate children.
Some get to be prime minister ... :D :D
Probably less than the number of women with illegitimate children, as it was more common for men to sleep around than women.
Cheers
Guy
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I remember several years ago reading through some baptism registers.For one entry the vicar had written "Another of Mary X's little bastards "
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... it was more common for men to sleep around than women.
I have always wondered about the stats for this. On the face of it, it makes sense, but as it takes two to tango, one must deduce that to be outnumbered, the women who participated must have had more partners than the men. Presumably many of them belonged to the oldest profession.
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My grandmother got married while expecting her third or fourth child
Kept first one, second one was adopted, I *think* her third was stillborn (my dad can remember something about her having a boy who died at birth before they married) then got married 3 months before my aunt was born (was late 20s into mid thirties)
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I have a couple who had their first child in 1834, the child was given father's forename as a middle name, and the couple finally married in 1839.
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Not that unusual in Northeast Scotland in the pre/early-Victorian era. My 2G Grandmother had 6 children with 4 different fathers and never married. She died at age 94. Her mother had 3 illegitimate as well, though all by the same father. And her mother's mother had at least one that I'm sure of. So it ran in familys apparently. LoL
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Not unusual - my great great grandmother Sarah, had 5 children out of wedlock (First when she was 17, 5th when she was 36). She then married and had 3 more children. One of her daughter had an illegitimate son, but married 4 years later and had a large family. No fathers named for any of them.
Incidentally, no trace of Sarahs parents getting married, so... like mother, like daughter etc?
On my fathers side, his aunt had three daughters out of wedlock, but they were brought up as her siblings.
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It's always worth looking for baptism s in such cases
Father is sometimes named
One of mine ran off when she was 15 had 2 children before marriage went to South Africa had another then got married and had 3 children baptised together had another 2
Her husband died while she was pregnant and she had another child 2 years after his death who carried his surname.
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Thank you all for this input to a question I had registered in order to ask! It appears the sister of my husband's great (x3) grandfather had at least 10 illegitimate children - no suspected father on any census, absence of maiden name on GRO entries, always unmarried on census. Unfortunately I cannot find any baptisms for any of the children. They all (but one) vanish off the radar by 1881. Cannot find clear deaths or marriages (still to look at emigration or to order birth certs to get more information).
Before I went any further I was going to ask how common this was. Seems it was, although 10 seems to be quite a lot. Her name was Margaret Berry b. c. 1823, baptized Aysgarth N. Yorks in 1826. I cannot find her first three in GRO (Joseph c. 1842; Mary c. 1843 and Ann c. 1845). Joseph I tracked further by marriage, censuses and death. Ann must have died as Margaret had another daughter in 1864 named Ann.
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Hi all,
I am a DNA search angel reseacher and I have for the past two years been helping a wonderful family of three half siblings all born between 1929-1938 in the Kensington area with different fathers.
Mum didn't marry until many years after the third was born. Sadly the first and last born siblings spent time in childrens homes.
Have reconnected two of the siblings via DNA with their paternal family lines and currently working on the last born.
I really don't think multiple illegitimate births are so unusual.
Helen x
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Heb 66 i like your title dna search angel researcher
I call myself a time travel detective have also helped many people thru dna results with adoption in their lines .
My grandmother was adopted we now know her birth parents .
& Helped a war baby work out which line of smiths she was from. And the most likely sibling/half sibling to be her birth father.
I certainly believe with luck and tbe right people testing you can identify the birth father of parents grandparents and even great grandparents thru dna
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... I think I found another child, Henry b. 1838. That would make 11 illegitimate children, and never married.
Margaret had a sister, Elizabeth, who also never married. I do wonder if the first four children were hers and not Margaret's. Again, no baptism and no GRO registration. Found on 1841 census. The first four children appear in the early censuses in the household of Margaret and Elizabeth's father, Henry Berry b. c 1796, and appear as his grandchildren. Henry b. 1838 also vanishes off the radar!
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I have someone in a tree that I’m researching who had at least 11 illegitimate children between 1920 - 1939. Most of these babies died. I’ve reason to believe that the later children had the same father, and Mum was listed as his housekeeper in the 1939 census. I don’t know about the earlier children but will be interested to see which household she was in in 1921.
In situations like this, there was clearly an established relationship which just hadn’t been formalised (I think the father of the later children was still married, and divorce was still pretty uncommon and costly). But of course there were also girls and women for whom pregnancy was an occupational hazard; and there were some who were repeatedly taken advantage of, in family or institutional settings :-\
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I'm reading The Five at the moment (Hallie Rubenfold) which is about the victims of Jack the Ripper. The first, Polly Nichols, is thought to have lived with several men not her husband - her husband lived with one of the neighbours and looked after Polly's children and one of her own. It does seem that flitting from relationship to relationship wasn't hampered by marriage to someone else and result in illegitimate children.
So in your case, Annie, there would have been income from her "job" as housekeeper or support from the man. In my case, I cannot understand how she could have managed - she was listed as labourer on a farm - although she didn't have to support all 11 at one time, at one point she had six. I wonder how she managed to survive financially.
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Maybe my ancestor Emma Auber was a "lady of the night". She had 5 illegitimate children. Unless she was getting financial support from a man. She did give one of her children Gore as a middle name. Again, DNA testing is coming on in leaps and bounds so we may be able to find elusive fathers through autosomal DNA, but I still wonder how much you can actually rely on DNA to smash down those brickwalls?
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Maybe my ancestor Emma Auber was a "lady of the night". She had 5 illegitimate children. Unless she was getting financial support from a man. She did give one of her children Gore as a middle name. Again, DNA testing is coming on in leaps and bounds so we may be able to find elusive fathers through autosomal DNA, but I still wonder how much you can actually rely on DNA to smash down those brickwalls?
It would be a mistake to assume that a woman of that era who had multiple illegitimate children was a member of the world's oldest profession. Illegitimacy rates were due to a combination of many factors. Population growth, geographical location, climate, farming practices, religious schisms, and changing cultural and economic conditions would be just a few of those. The vast majority of illegitimate births had nothing to do with prostitution.
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What options were there for a single woman of little means to support a lot of children? Before the welfare state and not including the workhouse.
My Margaret was a farm labourer. No marriage and no suspected fathers. Could the father(s) be forced to pay for their children's support - and was that likely in reality? I have heard of bastardy bonds but although I have many illegitimate children in my tree, I only found one where the father had actually been identified as financially responsible. Mostly I found illegitimate children born to one mother numbered one or occasionally two (and then they married). 11 is my all time record and I cannot imagine how Margaret could have supported this many without ever marrying. Her father was also an ag lab. Small North Yorks rural community. I can't find the children anywhere, no deaths, marriages or appearing within other households.
Intriguing.
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I myself likewise have found many illegitimate ancestors, and in only one case so far was the father brought to court and even in that case the women in question still ended up in the workhouse, so she apparently never collected anything substantial from the father. You can't get blood from a stone, so to speak. Most of these people were dirt poor, after all.
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What options were there for a single woman of little means to support a lot of children? Before the welfare state and not including the workhouse.
My Margaret was a farm labourer. No marriage and no suspected fathers. Could the father(s) be forced to pay for their children's support - and was that likely in reality? I have heard of bastardy bonds but although I have many illegitimate children in my tree, I only found one where the father had actually been identified as financially responsible. Mostly I found illegitimate children born to one mother numbered one or occasionally two (and then they married). 11 is my all time record and I cannot imagine how Margaret could have supported this many without ever marrying. Her father was also an ag lab. Small North Yorks rural community. I can't find the children anywhere, no deaths, marriages or appearing within other households.
Intriguing.
In a word, few. You could apply for the poor rolls, or go to a workhouse. Neither was an appealing prospect.
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Sad to imagine.
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What options were there for a single woman of little means to support a lot of children? Before the welfare state and not including the workhouse.
My Margaret was a farm labourer. No marriage and no suspected fathers. Could the father(s) be forced to pay for their children's support - and was that likely in reality? I have heard of bastardy bonds but although I have many illegitimate children in my tree, I only found one where the father had actually been identified as financially responsible. Mostly I found illegitimate children born to one mother numbered one or occasionally two (and then they married). 11 is my all time record and I cannot imagine how Margaret could have supported this many without ever marrying. Her father was also an ag lab. Small North Yorks rural community. I can't find the children anywhere, no deaths, marriages or appearing within other households.
Intriguing.
Sometimes people did sell themselves a few times, to earn some money if they were poor and desperate.
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"Sometimes people did sell themselves a few times, to earn some money if they were poor and desperate."
Oh, without question that happened on occasion. I'm just saying that the overall rate of illegitimacy had very little to do with prostitution, even though one might think the two were related.
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My ancestor lived in rural Berkshire and had 3 illegitimate children inbetween 1822 and 1828. Maybe the father wouldn't or couldn't marry her, that is if they all had the same father. I descend from the one born 1822, Thomas Edgington.
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My ancestor lived in rural Berkshire and had 3 illegitimate children inbetween 1822 and 1828. Maybe the father wouldn't or couldn't marry her, that is if they all had the same father. I descend from the one born 1822, Thomas Edgington.
Yes, it's very hard to trace fathers in those years before the civil records. If the parents weren't active in the church, and sometimes even if they were, records were scarce to none. I've gotten lucky with most of my illegitimate ancestors so far. The Scot's occasional practice of using the fathers surname as a middle name has saved me several times. Also I have found documentation in poorhouse records as well as Church records. I even have found valuable family history in a book of traditional songs of Scotland! Of course, not everyone will have a piper or fiddler in the family, but it goes to show that you can find things in the most unusual of places. It's a never ending saga, Family research is!