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Thanks Tony -

So if we were to ask for her birth certificate we would get the "legalized" one showing both her parents names, as if that was the way it was issued in the first place. But if you asked for the other certificates (original birth certificate and subsequent legalization/adoption documents) would they give them to you?

And we would never even know about this whole situation if the birth registration index wasn't available for viewing online.

Interesting.

I've just gone back and checked, and there is an entry for her under Newson/Newson in the first quarter of 1931.

So it would appear that she was b before her parents were married, then her parents had her name legally changed to her father's in 1945, no doubt spurred by his wartime experiences (shot down over Nuremburg, then interned, etc).

Off to contact Camden Registry Office to see what kind of records they can produce - thanks for all your help, both of you!

now that's weird.

You are quite right, I checked Dec 1945 and sure enough there she is. So that note on the page for 1931 is a correction (because she really was born in Feb 1931) - but how odd there wouldn't be a corresponding note on the Dec1945 page, linking it to the corrected entry. If we didn't know when she was born this would be utterly confusing.

Thanks for clearing it up!

That certainly sounds like her.

The one we are most interested in is Joseph, the third child, as he is the one we are descended from. He was b in 1871, just before the census, in Bristol. We've not been able to find a record of his birth, but Bristol is where Elizabeth's brother John was living with his wife and baby son. By the time of the 1871 census John's household also shows William and Emma living with him, and Elizabeth is living in Abergavenny with her father and baby boy Joseph.

I suspect Elizabeth may have sent her children to live with her brother to give them a better home, as John worked on the ovens, and Wm was working with him as a potter's labourer; she may have gone to Bristol to have the baby, as she was never married on any census, then took him to Abergavenny to raise him where presumably no one knew of her less than savoury past.

On the other hand Bristol is a port, so she could have gone there for the increased job opportunities with all the sailors...

We may never know the full story, I guess.

So am I - and thank you so much for the additional information, most fascinating.

Now the question is - were her children the result of her occupation, or the reason for it? As she is directly related, this puts the parentage of a large branch of the family in limbo.