"Chrisom child"?

[stanmapstone]

The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth, commonly called The Churching of Women
This site gives a comprehensive explanation of 'Churching' http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mikef/church.html#intro



Stan

[stanmapstone]

Thank you Hallhawk.
It is true what you say about a possible carry-over of a Jewish practice. Most people would be unaware of how many customs and practices have been carried over.

In Jewish Law the 'uncleaness' came from the bleeding, not from the birth. The period of uncleaness after the birth of a baby boy, 40 days, was half the period of for a girl, 80 days. After 40 days(or 80days) the time of purification was completed, and the woman went to the priest with a sacrificial offering after which she was ceremonially clean from her flow of blood.
Churching of Women in the Christian Church was a service of thanksgiving and nothing to do with 'uncleaness'
See http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,214719.msg1114899.html#msg1114899
Stan

[Marmaduke 123]

Going back to the question of the "chrisom child", I am sure the meaning described by Stan is technically correct, but I'm not sure the term was always used strictly correctly in parish registers.

I'm thinking of one register in particular, where quite a few burials are recorded as of a chrisom child, but there are definitely no corresponding baptisms. I've taken the term to mean in those cases just a very young infant, or even an unbaptised infant.

Anne

[halhawk]

As an added point of interest to Marmaduke's reply above - The Bills of Mortality for London in 1665 (the Great Plague year) record the deaths of  'Chrisomes' and 'Infants' separately on the weekly Bills, although the one giving the totals for the year lumps them together as 'Chrisomes and Infants'.
Whether this means there was a distinction between the two terms, or they were returned differently by different parishes I don't know.  I'm only familiar with the Bills from 1665.

[pinefamily]

It never ceases to amaze me how much knowledge is lost over the centuries, as customs and habits change.
I was talking to someone not that long ago who told me that blacksmithing was a dying art (trade?), because of mass production and new techniques.