Brick wall after illegitimacy (UK)

[rosie99]

From other posts on rootschat it appears it was not unusual to have more than one illegitimate child.
Sometimes there are 'bastardy orders' for maintenance of the children. 

[CaroleW]

Both birth certificates list no father.  One gives mother's name as Hannah Woodings and the other gives the mother's name as Mary Gartside spinster.

On whose birth cert is Hannah listed as mother - is it one of the 2 brothers listed above or unconnected to this post

As there is no doubt Mary was unmarried - there is no way Thomas Garside was their father.  Mary would have had to have married somebody with the same surname for that to be true and their baptisms would have shown Thomas as their father

[PennineAcute]

Sorry Emma Woodings is another person in my tree with father unknown.  I will edit that bit out.

[whiteout7]

Not unusual to have two out of wedlock children. Looks made up unless Thomas Gartside was a man that lived in the village and they were relatives.

[suzard]

another possibility is the father was Thomas Wright

in my tree most of the illegit ones (and there are a few) are given as a middle name the father's surname - then the father is later names as his correct forname and the surname of the mother!!!

Just a maybe

Suz

[whiteout7]

Does the surname Wright occur anywhere futher back in the Gartside line, if not ....

[Rosinish]

Quick question.  Is it strange to have two children with unknown fathers?

It wasn't so much as 'unknown fathers' but just as things are in this day, if the father wasn't present at birth reg. or baptism then his name wouldn't be included but there's also the fact of him denying responsibility rather than the mother not knowing who the father was although everyone else would have had knowledge or at least a good idea  ...

'Never kiss at the garden gate
Love is blind but the neighbours ain't' 

Annie

[Mowsehowse]

In my experience, the illeg male child is named for the (putative) father, with the mother's surname tacked on the end. Of course if there was an actual "relationship" which produced more than one child, the given first name would not always be the same as the father's.

The Parish Overseers would haul the pregnant woman up before them and demand to know the father of the expected child, so that he could make some payments for its maintenance, thus avoiding a cost to the parish.  This would be recorded in a bastardy bond, and payments would be recorded in the parish rate books.  Both of these still survive in some areas, and it is worth enquiring at the relevant records office in the hope that you will be lucky.

It was also likely that the child would then be put into an apprenticeship, (which have sometimes been indexed,) and one clue is if the child is rather young.... I have a 6 year old. 

I do have one woman who most definitely had 2 illeg daughters; (the paperwork survives,) and they were both put into apprenticeships at the age of 8. Neither were given their respective father's surname.  As the mother had an extremely unusual surname, I have my suspicions that there was a third illeg daughter, though sadly I do not have a paper trail to prove it..... as yet.

You ask if it is "strange to have two children with unknown fathers", a point that I have pondered at length, wondering if the mothers were bad or mad. Obviously some couples just got "carried away", and some women had only one trade they could use to make money. 

In the case of the male child mentioned above, the father was a married tanner, (who probably smelled incredibly awful,) and I suspect the liaison may not have been the mother's choice!! 

[ThrelfallYorky]

I've had at least two who were illegitimate, who, although their birth certs showed no name for father, when they were married quoted their GRANDFATHER's name as father - and I can't believe it was incest! Sometimes it seemed that they named the person who had brought them up as father. In both the cases I have, it seemed from the spouses parent's occupation that the illegitimate ones were "marrying up" in status / class, and so might have fibbed to avoid the blank on the marriage certificate? Can't have been unknown?