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Illegitimacy in Colyton, 1851–1881

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Jean Robin
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Continuity and Change , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , August 1987 , pp. 307 - 342
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Robin, J., ‘Prenuptial pregnancy in a rural area of Devonshire in the mid-nineteenth century: Colyton 1851–1881’, Continuity and Change 1: 1 (1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Laslett, P., ‘Introduction’, in Laslett, P., Oosterveen, K. and Smith, R. M., eds., Bastardy and its comparative history (London, 1980), 3.Google Scholar

3 Laslett, P., ‘The bastardy prone sub-society’, in Bastardy, 217–46.Google Scholar

4 Oosterveen, K. and Smith, R., ‘Family reconstitution and the study of bastardy’, in Bastardy, table 3.8, 96.Google Scholar

5 Laslett, P., ‘Introduction, Bastardy’ table 1.1c, p. 17.Google Scholar

6 It may be asked how far the 30 illegitimate children traced from the censuses and the Guardians' minute books were part of a migrant population, born outside Colyton and living there for only a short period. In fact 15 of them were born, and, if they survived infancy, brought up in Colyton. A further 9 were born outside the parish, but their mothers were Colyton-born. In one case, the child's step-father was a Colytonian, and in two more, the mothers, although immigrants, were resident in the parish with their own parents before giving birth to a bastard. Only three cases remain where no links of birth or long-term residence in Colyton have been found.

7 Laslett, P., ‘Introduction’, table 1.1c, p. 17Google Scholar, gives the following illegitimacy rates for England and Wales, at 5-year intervals; 1851–5= 18.1; 1856–60= 18.5; 1861–5 = 18.8; 1866–70 = 17.6; 1871–5 = 15.9; 1876–80 = 14.4. cf Colyton, 1851–61 = 17.6, 1861–71 = 22.0; 1871–81 = 14.8.

8 Robin, J., ‘Prenuptial pregnancy’, 116–17.Google Scholar

9 Oosterveen, K. and Smith, R., ‘Family reconstitution’, 113.Google Scholar

10 The nine cases are grouped as follows: age 21–25, 11%; 26–30, 44.5%; 31–35, 33.5%; 36–40, 11%.

11 The same effect is apparent, although slightly less marked, even if labourers' daughters only are considered. These women, as we have seen, made up more than half the sample (57%). The mean age at which they gave birth to their first illegitimate child was 20.89 years, compared with a mean age at marriage of 22.81 years of labourers' daughters who had not borne a child out of wedlock.

12 Laslett, P., ‘Introduction’, 55.Google Scholar

13 Oosterveen and Smith give the median age of women at the birth of their first bastard in four parishes, including Colyton, from 1800 to 1849 as 23.1, compared with a median age in Colyton from 1851 to 1881 of 21.4. See Oosterveen, K. and Smith, R., ‘Family reconstitution’, table 3.13, p. 107.Google Scholar

14 If we consider only those mothers who bore their first illegitimate child before 1871, and who might therefore be expected to have married, if they were going to, by 1881, we find that 60 per cent did in fact marry, compared with 52 per cent of the whole sample from 1851 to 1881.

15 Circumstances taken to indicate that the mother married the father of her child are (i) where the marriage took place less than a year after the birth of the child, and the child took the surname of the husband and was referred to as his son or daughter in subsequent census entries (no. of cases = 3); (ii) where the illegitimate child was given the future husband's surname as a Christian name at baptism (no. of cases = 2); (iii) where the Axminster Marriage Notice Book showed the intention of one couple to marry, the entry dating from after the conception of the child, but the marriage not taking place until after the birth; (iv) where one illegitimate child received late baptism, at six years old, under the surname of the mother's husband. It has been assumed that the mother did not marry the father of the illegitimate child (I) where the child was returned in the census as stepchild or son- or daughter-in-law of the man its mother married, or retained its mother's maiden name (no. of cases = 9); (II) where the child was living with its maternal grandparents in Colyton, retaining its mother's name, while the mother was known to havemarried (no. of cases = 5); (III) where the man the mother ultimately married would have been under 17 years of age when the illegitimate child was born or baptized (no. of cases = 2); (IV) where one child at baptism was given, as a Christian name, a surname different from that of the man the mother ultimately married, this name not being a family name of the mother's kin; (V) where the legitimate child of one marriage remained with the husband after the mother's death, but the illegitimate child did not.

16 In one case the gap stood at one year, and in five cases at two years. There was a three-year gap in two further cases, and a four-year gap in another one.

17 See the case against J. Beer of Chardstock, in D.R.O. Axminster Guardians Minute Book, vol. 11, 30. 5. 1872.

18 In one case, the woman was shown as living without her husband, but later records make it clear that his absence was only temporary, and did not constitute a marriage breakdown.

19 D.R.O. Axminster Guardians Minute Book, vol. 12, 25. 5. 1876.

20 Six of the 11 bastard-bearers who had experience of the workhouse were ‘repeaters’; that is to say, they had more than one illegitimate child.

21 D. R. O., Colyton PO 14, Receipt and payment book, Poor Law Commission.

22 ‘A good lace-maker easily earns her shilling a day, but in most parts of Devonshire the work is paid by the truck system, many of the more respectable shops giving one half of the money, the remaining sixpence to be taken out in tea or clothing, sold often considerably above their value.’ Note dated 1875, in Palliser, F. B., History of Lace, ed. by Jourdain, M. and Dryden, A., 1902, reprinted 1976, 414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Average weekly wages for a male adult farm worker in the Axminster division during the quarter ending Michaelmas, 1860, were recorded as 8 shillings a week, with a quart of cider a day, but it was noted that ‘The wages in this Union do not average more than 8 shillings per week in addition. Many able-bodied labourers state they have not more than 7s. per week, on the average, throughout the year.’ parliamentary Papers L, p. 589, H.M.S.O. 1861.

24 Bardet, J. and Dupaquier, J., ‘Vierges sages ou vierges folles, nos ancetres etaient-elles vertueuses?’, 141–163.Google Scholar

25 Paslett, P., ‘The bastardy prone sub-society’, 217.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., table 8.a, p. 220.

27 Pamela Sharpe, a research student at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, was told on a recent visit to Colyton that a certain Court was ‘where the prostitutes used to live’, though such hearsay evidence may reflect a generalised view of bastard-bearers in the past, rather than exact knowledge of their role as prostitutes.

28 Laslett, P., ‘The bastardy prone sub-society’, 218.Google Scholar

29 Two of these children were born before 1851, and so do not appear in the total of 150 illegitimate births between 1851 and 1881 discussed above.

30 The houseful here is taken to comprise household members together with boarders and lodgers.

31 Unfortunately no evidence is available on the men who fathered bastards. If it were, the proportion of bastardy-connected housefuls would almost certainly increase.

32 In the six housefuls whose only connection with bastardy lay in the inmate group which had been taken in, the poverty or otherwise of the head of the inmate group rather than the houseful head has been registered. For convenience, no further distinction between houseful head and head of the inmate group has been made.

33 The original sample of 92 housefuls, less five whose only connection with illegitimacy lay in a bastard or bastard-bearing servant.

34 If this limited list of bastardy connections were extended to include, for instance, the parents of bastard-bearers who had left home by 1861, the proportion of bastardy-connected housefuls might be considerably increased.

35 Although real Christian names have been retained, surnames have been deliberately omitted.

36 The records of the Axminster Petty Sessions, which might report on cases involving illegitimacy, are available only from 1880, and thus cover only one year of the period of this study.

37 Thomson, D., ‘Welfare and the historians’ in Bonfield, L., Smith, R. M. and Wright-son, K., eds., The world we have gained (1986) 373.Google Scholar

38 D.R.O. Axminster Guardians Minute Book, vol. 11, 19. 3. 1874.

39 Ibid. vol. 12, 20. 12. 1877.

40 Ibid. vol. 12, 14. 10. 1875 to 6. 7. 1876. After the magistrates' decision the guardians referred the matter to the Local Government Board in London, but their minutes do not record the outcome of this approach.

41 Thomson, D., ‘Welfare’, 373.Google Scholar

42 Flandrin, J., Les amours paysannes (Paris, 1975) 234–5.Google Scholar

43 Eighteen illegitimate births recorded in the parish registers have been excluded because there is insufficient evidence to show whether or not the children concerned were their mothers' first-born offspring.

44 Laslett, P., ‘The bastardy prone sub-society’, 217.Google Scholar