Genealogy Chat

I have recently obtained certificates for two births listed in the BMD Index with the same parents' surnames, and am mystified by the information shown. A couple was married in Dorset in Dec qr 1940. These certificates indicate the wife (impossibly?) had two children in 1942:

1) Child born on 9 February in the London area.
- Birth registered by the father on 9 March in the London area.
- Mother's name given as her married name, with her maiden name also shown.
- Mother's spouse was named as father of the child.
- Father's address shown as being in the London area.
(I believe this child went by the name on the certificate, and may still be living).

2) Child born on 27 March in the same Dorset location as the couple was married.
- Birth registered by the mother on 30 April in the same Dorset location.
- Mother's name given as her married name, with her maiden name also shown.
- Father of the child was not named.
(I can find no other record of this child under the name shown on the certificate).

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how, or why, this may have been? Thank you.

some jiggery pokery going on ;-)


is it possible that the child was not the child of the father, and the mother was trying to be honest.


A child has to be registered within 6 weeks or a fine paid .................. she might have changed the birth date so that the date she registered it fell within the 6 weeks, so she did not have to pay a fine

Do you know if the parents had any more children together? (Just trying to get some idea of the possible circumstances)

Are they common surnames?

How did you get back to the family?

Sorry about all the questions, appreciate that you do not want to give information on a possibly living person, just it makes it difficult to actually look at what is going on.

SylviaInCanada, thanks for your reply. These appear on the face of it to be two different children - they were registered with different forenames. I have heard of twins being born some time apart, but that is unlikely in this case given that the mother appears to have travelled/moved from London to Dorset during the six weeks between the births! Also, although the mother's (very unusual) forenames and married/maiden names were identical on both certificates, one child was registered with a father's name, the other was not.

patchem, thanks for your reply, too. No, the parents didn't have any more children together. They divorced not long after 1942 and I believe both had married again by the late 1940s. The surnames were not common, particularly their married name, which shows very few listings in the BMD Index.

This couple and their child(ren) are not related to me, but the mother spent some time in a foster home with my father when they were very young, in the 1920s. My father remembers her husband's surname because it was so unusual. I had been researching our own family when my father asked if I might be able to find out more about the children he grew up with.

March child is the child of the Mother plus a different father. Not necessarily that of her next husband.

February child is the child of the Father, and a different mother, and the Father is giving the details of his actual wife as part of the jiggery pokery.

Depends how many lies each person is prepared to tell/thinks is needed.

Thank you patchem. There would have been rationing in Britain during that period, and I wondered if this may have been a means to claiming a bigger share? Otherwise I can't think of a benign reason for registering two births so close together and yet so geographically separated. There appear so far to be no other records for the March child, although this may just mean they were not married and are still living (or gone overseas somewhere). Or it may mean that there was only ever one child, registered twice in different names. Perhaps the mother's move to Dorset marked the couple's separation? Such a mystery!

Well, here's my thoughts, for what it's worth..........
the mother left the father, and London, after 9 March and returned 'home' to Dorset (obviously before 30 April), and for whatever reason decided to re-register the child. Perhaps she thought she HAD to register the birth again since she had moved from one county to another.
OR
Perhaps, having returned home to Dorset, she wanted it to appear the child had been born just a bit later than it really had, for whatever reason.
And she didn't want the father's name on the new registration because she had left him, or that the husband she had just left was not the real father?
Does a clue lie in the child's names? ie does the child have several Christian names? Perhaps the mother married the real father eventually, since you say the original married couple split in/soon after 1942.

Hmmm....interesting :-S

My first thought was bigamy but on reading right through, would that fit?

AngeB believes that Child 1) is still living, and under that name.

So if the Mother returned to Dorset, the Father would have had to reclaim Child 2) as Child 1).

But that does not explain 2 different birth dates.

But as AngeB has found no other trace of Child 2), we do not know.

This is difficult because I can't just spell it out here, as it is so recent, but although I know of the possible whereabouts of the February child, I haven't been able to make direct contact, so I have no idea of how much they might know themselves.

The mother of the (two) child(ren) had a different name when my father knew her growing up in foster care. I only discovered her real name when I searched for her marriage, to a man with the unusual surname that my father remembered.

The February child had two forenames: the first I can see from the BMD Index also shows up elsewhere in the husband's side of the family, the second was the "nickname" the mother was known by as a child. The March child had only one, different, forename, that I haven't seen elsewhere in their family, then or since.

I've just spoken to my father and he is pretty certain that the mother raised the February child herself (in London). We have photos in our albums that also suggest this. Her first husband moved overseas and had more children, with his second wife.

My father was telling me that during the war years things in Britain were quite chaotic, especially in London with the bombing causing thousands of residents to be evacuated. Also all records were kept by hand, without the modern "data matching" checks to prevent duplicate/fraudulent registrations etc. But he is at a loss to explain the second birth registration in Dorset.

My Nan said it was quite common around that time for someone to take in (unofficially adopt) a brother or sisters child and bring them up as their own. That would account for the two children being born so close and in different areas. This could have been done to protect the family name or because the birth mother could not afford to bring up the child herself.

Jane

Thanks for your reply, Jane. That is an interesting thought - I hadn't considered that the March child could have been someone else's altogether. The mother came from that location in Dorset, so she may have known of someone who needed care for their child and so had gone back down from London to "adopt" the baby to raise with her own newborn. I shall try to find out if there is any suggestion anywhere that the February child had a younger sibling.

If you think you might want to contact her, you can find the first child's address and phone number on Google.

PM me if you want help finding it.

Rose

What birth places are on the certificates,,ie

When and where born,,,,there is a place/address.

Thanks Rose. Quite a while ago I was in contact with someone who knew the February child, and passed on my details, but when I heard nothing more I assumed they did not want to get in touch so I have not taken it any further. I don't want to upset anyone, and have only pursued it this far because my father, now well into his '90s, would really like to know what became of the family. I posted here because I was very puzzled by this latest discovery and wondered if anyone had come across anything similar elsewhere. I really appreciate everyone's help and suggestions, thank you.

Maybe the father registered the birth in London; the parents split up; she moved to Dorset with the child; she didn't realise the father had already registered the birth and decided to do so herself. :-S

My thoughts on this are with Graham

Same child registered twice

but why not name the father in April,? he put himself on the March registration when he himself registered the birth,

He may not have been the childs real father, hence the split.

It was during the war. Many a child born to a father where the dates do not match with him being at home on leave!!!!!

I happen to remember the names in question ;)

I had originally thought maybe one child was born late Nov, the other child late June prematurely ... but it seems not!

I think I would suspect the same as Patchem, that each spouse had a child after separation and the husband registered one as if his wife were the mother, while the wife registered the other with no father's name

I think registering the same child twice, with different names and birthdates, would be decidedly odd

however as others have said, fudging a birthdate to avoid penalties might not be inconceivable, and if the first child was registered late in the midst of separation and recriminations perhaps ...

the second child may well have lived under the real father's surname, or under the surname of a subsequent spouse/partner of the mother

the wife did remarry within the decade, but unfortunately her new surname was very common, and that child's given name (no middle name) was not especially distinctive so it would be impossible to identify a marriage from the index even if that were the surname the child lived under

have you considered getting the mother's death certificate to see who the informant was? she was of a reasonably old age when she died so her husband may likely have predeceased her, leaving her child as a possible informant of death

(new husband's name again too common to identify death ... but a death 7 years before the wife's in the same very general part of the country as her death could be him ... actually the only death of someone one born anywhere around the same time as the wife with the right middle initial ...)


the first child is on the electoral register at Ancestry in 1964 under the birth name ... I don't have access to those records, I'm wondering who else might be at the same address and whether that might help sort out the situation at all

there is another person with the same surname on that and previous electoral rolls whose name isn't accounted for in any other record, just out of curiosity


also the only problem with the theory of the first child being the husband's is that he emigrated while that child was still a child ..............


the thing is just that the first child seems to have lived under the first registered name, so if the second child was the same child, that name just didn't 'take' so it would seem kind of pointless