Thread: Finding the Fathers

I would love to be able to find out where the information is about the fathers,I have read that these young girls were told that they had to say who they were or face prison, and sometimes if the authorities found out who they were asked for payment of some kind.Our grandad Herbert Hillier was given up by Eleanor Hillier, he was born in 1897,, no fathers name on his birth cert. on the 1901 census he was with the family of William Boardman in Chorlton,Hulme age 3yrs,now the Hilliers were a lge family in Franklin St, and the Boardmans were a Young family in nearby Osborne St.we seem to think that there was something with William Boardman and Eleanor Hillier and that is why they took him in as a baby but never gave him their name and although Sarah Boardman raised him she never bore him and thats why,and we think that Eleanors fam shipped her off somewhere, because in the 1911 census after some searching we found her back living with her mother and one of the sisters Harriet Forsyth then, and she had another child Alice Hoffman and it says she had been married for 10yrs,but we cannot find anything on alice hoffman from then but my dad had an aunty alice who used to come and see us,Honestly we are so mad with Eleanor she has definitely given us the run around,and she is still a mystery, we are sure she married a Sowerby after and a Barlow in 1916,but Alice's 3children who's name was Millington all have their mothers maiden name down as Stansfield, so perhaps that was another Eleanor Marriage,God what a mystery.

Hi Valjay,



Have you checked the B astardy bonds. These would be with the poor law records at the record office. These would show the mother's name and also the name, date of birth of her child and the parish responsible for paying for the child's upkeep. The bonds were to ensure that the father's of illigitimate children paid maintenance for the child but once the father had sworn an oath stating he was the father he was sent to jail. I have found reference to a couple of mine in court quarter sessions which would be worth checking as well. I haven't seen reference to the mother's going to jail but I can see how this would happen especially if it was found that they knew who the father was but didn't say.

Hello,

Quite often, young girls, particularly of the middle and upper middle classes, of the later 19th century; if they got pregnant were shipped off to the local lunatic asylum or sanitorium by their families. This is sometimes the reason why a young, reasonably well to do, woman goes missing from the censuses. Most such institutions just recorded the initials of inmates, so if you don't know where they are, and you can't find a death, it is worth checking such places.



As Starlight says, the Paternity Bonds and Orders of the relevant Poor Law Union Group, and Court proceedings, are the first places to start looking to find a father. Not all Unions viciously hounded the new grade of "wrongdoers", particularly in the growing townships, and in places where ratepayers were not so vociferous. Often, as anyone who has done research for any length of time will know, working class families supported their own illeg offspring, so that ratepayers were not involved, except that the child would hold a Settlement Certificate for the place where it was born.



Complaining about rates and taxes is a national occupation in all eras, and nothing much has changed today. It is just on a national and international, rather than local, level.

By 1897 *******y bonds had died out. You might find a paternity order in the Quarter Sessions which would be at the relevant County Records Office/Archive.



But a lot of illegitimate children were either fostered out or brought up with grandparents or aunties etc. Not all families thought it was a source of shame - in country villages it was an accepted fact.



I have quite a few illegitimate children in my family tree and only one of them has a named father on the birth cert - though I haven't definitely been able to locate him on censuses.

I think that this is what I was saying, albeit in a long winded way. It was the ratepayers and those rising up the ranks of the new-money middle classes who frowned on illegitimacy to the point where it became seen as a crime against society. It is a known fact that about 60percent of firstborns were conceived, if not born, out of wedlock in the 19th century.

Transferring that to today, it was a bit like the one-parent family bashing that goes on.