Bastards! (Oops!)

I’ve never really studied illegitimacy in genealogical records much. My wife’s grandfather was one and I think it plagued him all of his life. We found his birth record very early on in the search of his family history and there it was, written plain as day, “Illegitimate”. On many formal records, he gave erroneous data about his parentage, showing the name of a non-existent father on his two marriage records and the first name of a step-father on his military attestation papers. He told stories about his upbringing that only had a grain of truth to them. He was apparently a very difficult man to live with, especially to his children, and I wonder if the start he had in life was not something that in part at least resulted in those poor attitudes.

In poring through thousands of parish register entries as an Online Parish Clerk I have come across many baptism entries for “base children”. A great number of them were born in and lived with their single mothers in the local workhouse which probably contributed to the relaxed morals.

It seemed that there were many periods when quite a lot of illegitimate children were baptized but I had not done any in-depth study to demonstrate the fact. A comment in an article or blog – I don’t remember now where I saw it – prompted me to go back to the baptism registers of those Devon parishes I look after and actually count them. The numbers and trends were surprising! Below is a table showing the illegitimate births in the four parishes, broken down in 50-year periods. The totals include:

·         children who were identified in the register as “base born” (the most common description) or “illegitimate”

·         children whose mothers were shown as single women

·         children where no father was listed, no occupation was shown for the mother or where the occupation suggested the woman was single, such as a servant

Beginning in the mid-1800s, even while population was increasing in these parishes, baptisms were declining. Births after 1837 were required to be registered with civil authorities so the parish records became less important in terms of showing all children born in an area. Notwithstanding this fact, the ratios of illegitimacy to total baptisms may still be representative of the total population.

Plympton St. Mary Parish, Devon
	Female	Male	Total Illegitimate	% Illegitimate	Total Baptisms
1600-1649	27	39	66	2.97%	2,223
1650-1699	21	16	37	1.99%	1,856
1700-1749	33	34	67	4.55%	1,472
1750-1799	60	75	135	6.62%	2,039
1800-1849	118	151	269	8.01%	3,359
1850-1899	214	258	472	11.75%	4,017
1900-1949	91	79	170	5.41%	3,143

The questions from this data are why certain areas and certain periods have a large proportion of illegitimate births.

In Plympton St. Mary, the largest parish in terms of population, a peak was reached during the second half of the 19^th century with almost 12% of births from single mothers. The rate of illegitimate births had been increasing gradually since the late 1700s but rapidly increased during the 1800s. Many of the small villages east of Plymouth grew into large towns, gradually coalescing into a more urban centre around Plympton St. Maurice. The population of Plympton St. Mary grew from 1,562 in 1801 to 3,812 in 1901.

There appears to have been rapid expansion and economic development throughout the 19^th century in the Plympton region perhaps due to nearby Plymouth becoming a major seaport and attracting new industry. Its port would have been a major draw to import and export businesses. My own 3^rd great-grandfather, and at least one of his brothers, moved from the rural parish of Cornwood to Underwood Village in Plympton St. Mary in the early 1850s. Both were carpenters, no doubt seeking work in the bustling building industry.

So did the hive of activity draw many more single people to the area with the natural result being more social interaction that would have been the case in quiet rural parishes? Did the port city have a more transient population where quick interactions of people occurred but permanent bonds did not develop?

A workhouse was established in Plympton St. Mary in 1836. That institution attracted many destitute individuals and families who were crowded into the facility. Relationships very likely developed between individuals as result of that closeness in living conditions leading, of course, to unwanted or unplanned pregnancies. The residence show for over 350 of the base children baptized was the workhouse.

The fact of increased illegitimacy rates appears firm. The reasons as yet are not really understood. Answers might be forthcoming with research on the actual families involved to see where the individuals, mothers primarily, originated and how they came to be in the state they found themselves – one generally of economic plight.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated