Lawton - Missing in census - How is this possible?

[fiddlerslass]

1881 free on familysearch if you register

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q27N-8QTB

Ancestry


https://www.ancestry.co.uk/discoveryui-content/view/22498605:7572?tid=&pid=&queryId=56cce0e1-9818-4a39-b51a-fa668febb8eb&_phsrc=DYR15042&_phstart=successSource

[littleem1906]

I wonder if the last child, William, was really Isaac's child then. He was baptised in 1888 in Birmingham. The baptism record says the parents are Adelaide and Isaac Lawton. father's occupation is moulder and the address is 1 Steward Street.

Either Isaac was out for a time and fathered another child, or William isn't his.

[fiddlerslass]

My gut feeling would be that William has a different father. There is a large gap between him and his siblings. Once you were committed to these Asylums it was very difficult to get out again. Might be interesting to look at DNA if you descend from child William. The William on the 1881 may have just called himself Lawton, though usually it was the woman who changed names to fit in with the man she was living with. I've got a woman in my ancestry who changes from married name Campbell to Martin in 1881 and has several children with Mr Martin although they never married, and I have not been able to work out what became of her first husband either!

[littleem1906]

I can't find a link to a William Lawton, who was living with Adelaide in 1881. I can't find a birth record in Birmingham for a William Lawton either. Could it be there was a William living with her whose surname was not Lawton? This would have given the appearance that they were a married couple.

[Tickettyboo]

I tried the Birmingham Archives catalogue to see if my usual avenues in other areas are available there on the original registers (the database on Ancestry is a combined one for the UK) to see if there may be something available to corroborate this 'quite likely' entry in the national database

Sadly every one I saw for the right time frame is closed and can't be searched or shown to the public and they all have mould damage.
casebooks
https://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=HC+AS%2f12%2f3

register of admissions of pauper lunatics
https://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=HC+AS%2f5%2f3

Discharges and deaths
https://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=HC+AS%2f9%2f8

Its like those old quiz shows on the TV - this is what you 'could have won' :-(

A burial register entry for Isaac Lawton is available at a cost of £10 from Birmingham Council but I very much doubt, as he was in the Asylum for so long, that it will have any mention of any family member or where he'd lived prior to being in the asylum so I don't think that would be worth the cost.

Boo

[Pheno]

I wonder if the last child, William, was really Isaac's child then. He was baptised in 1888 in Birmingham. The baptism record says the parents are Adelaide and Isaac Lawton. father's occupation is moulder and the address is 1 Steward Street.

Either Isaac was out for a time and fathered another child, or William isn't his.

My understanding of the system is that if a married woman registered a birth it was automatically assumed that her husband was the father, regardless of whether it was practical or not, unless the real father went to register the birth with her.

Pheno

[littleem1906]

All I have for Isaac's death is the attached.