Rules for unmarried parents to register a birth after 1875.
The details of both parents can be included on the birth certificate if one of the following happens:
They sign the birth register together.
One parent completes a statutory declaration of parentage form and the other takes the signed form to register the birth.
One parent goes to register the birth with a document from the court (for example, a court order) giving the father parental responsibility.
husbands or partners didnt have to be present at birth registration
Some of them could have been away in WW2.
Added
* Did the husband definitely know the child wasnt his
He may never have seen the birth certificate
Although Guy has stated the 1874 date, for 1874 through to 1960's, should really just be the first line. "The details of both parents can be included on the birth certificate if the following happens: They sign the birth register together."
So yes, for the 1936-1948 mentioned if the
uncles name is shown as
his father on the birth cert the
uncle would have had to be present.
Husbands did and do not have to be present to be recorded but for an unmarried couple ie an illegitimate birth in WW2 no fathers details would be written in the box unless he was present, it would be left blank.
If the mother did not want the husband to know the child had a different father it would have been easy & safer to just register him as a child of the husband even if untrue, she did not have to take the uncle to the GRO.
Births and Deaths Registration Act 1874 [and exactly the same wording in Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953]
"7 Saving for father of illegitimate child
In the case of an illegitimate child no person shall, as father of such child, be required to give information under this Act concerning the birth of such child, and the registrar shall not enter in the register the name of any person as father of such child, unless at the joint request of the mother and of the person acknowledging himself to be the father of such child, and such person shall in such case sign the register, together with the mother."
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/37-38/88/section/7/enacted/data.pdfhttps://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/1-2/20/section/10/enactedThere must have been an amendment in the 1960's inserting (a) & (b) allowing "One parent completes a statutory declaration of parentage form and the other takes the signed form to register the birth" [edit - was Family Law Reform Act 1969] as (c) the Court Order was inserted under the Children Act 1975
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1975/72/section/93/enactedand again revised again under the Children Act 1989 to become
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/schedule/12/paragraph/6#schedule-12-paragraph-6-2futher re-wording occurred in the 2000's to allow for civil partnerships, 2nd female parent etc
As an aside
A campaign in the 1920s resulted in the passage of the Legitimacy Act in 1926. This enabled children to be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of their parents, provided that neither parent had been married to someone else at the time of conception (that is, that the relationship was not an adulterous one - this one appears to have been). The birth could be
re-registered such that it appeared as if they were married prior to the birth ie not under both mother's and father's surnames, just the fathers.
There was a qualification regarding re-registration from 1926 that BOTH parents had to be present at the GRO revision UNLESS the father's details had previously been included on the illegitimate birth.
The Legitimacy Act 1959 extended legitimacy to the children of parents who had not been free to marry at the time of their birth, but who had married subsequently. Effectively allowing re-registration of births of children born as a result of adulterous relationships.
The later 1959 Act was also retrospective "In relation to an illegitimate person to whom it applies by virtue of this section, the Legitimacy Act, 1926, shall have effect as if for references to the commencement of that Act there were substituted references to the commencement of this Act."
But the Legitimacy Acts do not apply here as there was no re-marriage & the "child was raised by the woman's husband who knew he was not the child's father".