Baptisms stillborn babies Oldham workhouse 1849

[Maiden Stone]

Registers of baptisms and burials at Oldham workhouse have been added to Lancashire Online Parish Clerks website this month.
There were 6 baptisms recorded for 26th November 1849. Two were for stillborn babies, according to the transcription.

Baptism 26th Nov. 1849 still-born Taylor - son of Alice Taylor; born 13th April 1849;
To what parish chargeable: Oldham

Baptism 26th Nov. 1849  still-born Casey  - son of Rosanah Casey; born 2nd Nov. 1849;
To what parish chargeable: Com. charge
 
Also, what does "Com. charge" mean?
www.lan-opc.org.uk/Oldham/Oldham/workhouse/index.html

[avm228]

How odd - why would a stillborn baby be baptised at all, let alone weeks or months after its stillbirth?

[Bookbox]

Also, what does "Com. charge" mean?

It means that any costs were paid by the union's Common Fund, instead of being chargeable to any individual parish.

[Maiden Stone]

Thanks, Bookbox.  Judging by the mother's name, I assume she was Irish.

[StevenG]

I wonder if the transcriber quite understood the register. I've transcribed Bedford Workhouse for the same period and it is a register of births, not baptisms. If you look at the dates of birth in this register they are sequential. The baptism date is given if there was a baptism in the workhouse, but often there was not. My guess is that the transcriber has, for some reason, taken a blank baptism date as a "ditto" and filled in a fictitious date as a result.

[Maiden Stone]

I wonder if the transcriber quite understood the register. I've transcribed Bedford Workhouse for the same period and it is a register of births, not baptisms. If you look at the dates of birth in this register they are sequential. The baptism date is given if there was a baptism in the workhouse, but often there was not. My guess is that the transcriber has, for some reason, taken a blank baptism date as a "ditto" and filled in a fictitious date as a result.

That explanation occurred to me. However, the birth dates of 13th April and 2nd November are puzzling. Unless they were entered out of sequence.
The next register, beginning 1870, seems to be a list of births only.  (I've not looked at the whole of it.) It included a stillbirth in 1870.

[StevenG]

The date of birth is in the left hand column. So the birth dates for 1849 are 6 Jan, 1 Feb, 21 Mar, 13 Apr, 3 Jun, 17 Jul, 20 Oct, 2 Nov. These are sequential and there isn't a problem. The problem occurs because we can't see the "When Baptized" field in the original document. We know that this is wrong in at least two cases where the child was stillborn, but we don't know where the error occurs. It may be that only one child was baptised on 26 November, and all the others have been inferred.

There is an example of a workhouse Birth register here http://www.oldshuck.info/jpeg/births_first.jpg which might make things a little clearer.

[jonw65]

The problem occurs because we can't see the "When Baptized" field in the original document.

We can see the Oldham Workhouse Register of Births here
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSJQ-118Z?i=5&cat=588602

The 26 Nov baptism date for the Bowers birth, 21 March 1849, has been dittoed for the next five entries, including the two stillborns.

[Guy Etchells]

The problem occurs because we can't see the "When Baptized" field in the original document.

We can see the Oldham Workhouse Register of Births here
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSJQ-118Z?i=5&cat=588602

The 26 Nov baptism date for the Bowers birth, 21 March 1849, has been dittoed for the next five entries, including the two stillborns.

There is no christian name given in the register for either of the two stillborns leading me to assume the 'dittos' have been copied in error
Cheers
Guy