Genealogy Chat

Oh Brenda, I looked on the back (because I hadn't) but it is blank. WAIL! Back to Google! Abigail

Both my grandparents had birth certificates obtained for them when they first started employment. The back of the certificate was effectively the request for the certificate itself. In one case the father applied for it (and got all the details wrong!) in the other it was my grandfather's first employer. There were various acts through the 19th century that forbade the employment of children below a certain age, so certificates were required to demonstrate they had reached the appropriate ages. In my grandparents' cases it was because they were working in factories.

Ooh Nell! I am all excited now, Peta just sent me a message mentioning that child performers would need these proofs to obtain a licence to perform because of the working hours restrictions. Now I remember that my grandmother was in a girls dancing troupe. What they were called escapes me just now but it has got me digging in my brain again, hopefully in the right area this time! Abigail

Abigail I didn't know anything much about the insurance stuff either, though I've a feeling we did do 1911 at school, and Lloyd George had to threaten to stuff the House of Lords with new peers to get some social legislation passed. I just googled! nell

Perhaps she did stay on at school but needed the birth cert to prove her age as she had a part-time (after school, on Saturdays?) job. I know my uncles were working in the 1920s/30s as errand boys when they were 14. nell

Nell, That's brilliant! I never knew any of that - my twentieth century social history is just not up to scratch! I am going to write that down because I have a lot of them coming up for starting work around this time and quite a few industiral injuries for the men. Thanks Abigail

In 1908 David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal government led by Herbert Asquith proposed the 1911 National Insurance Act. This measure gave the British working classes the first contributory system of insurance against illness and unemployment. All wage-earners between sixteen and seventy had to join the health scheme. Each worker paid 4d. a week and the employer added 3d. and the state 2d. In return for these payments, free medical attention, including medicine was given. Those workers who contributed were also guaranteed 7s. a week for fifteen weeks in any one year, when they were unemployed. These benefits were paid at Labour Exchanges which provided unemployed workers with information on any vacancies which existed in the area. nell

Sorry Nell, It was actually issued on the 17th July 1930. Was not that before NI started? I have no idea what she was doing but I do know that after she left school and was waiting for her place to start at the teaching college she got a job at Marks and Spencers. She really enjoyed it and she worked there until her marriage in December 1937. I can't see Marks employing 14 year old on the shop floor though. And I don't think they would have started a teachers' course at just turned 14. Abigail

Abigail You don't say when this was, but I think it likely the cert is to do with national insurance. My dad had a birth cert issued for that reason when he started work. nell

I have a copy of my grandmother's birth certificate which states that it is 'supplied at the special fee of 6d applicable in certain statutory cases' and that 'This certificate is issued for the purposes of EMPLOYMENT IN LABOUR OF A CHILD and for no other use or purposes whatever' I thought my grandmother had stayed on at school to take exams for a teaching certificate but she would have been 14 when this certificate was issued. I know that you could leave school at 14 then but I didn't realise that you had to have documentation for work. Or is this special documentation for certain kinds of work? It does not say anything about the job or employers. Abigail