General Chat

A quick Google brings up the following article.............

https://essexandsuffolksurnames.co.uk/lawshall-of-private-baptisms-and-misgotten-infants/

buried within it , it mentions that in an emergency any baptised person can baptise a baby.

Although 'Christened', my 'Christening' was never formally followed up.

When I went to Saudi Arabia in 1973, I had to prove I wasn't a Jew - but had no Christening evidence to prove it!
I found a friendly vicar, explained the situation - and that I didn't want to be Christened formally, as I wasn't a Christian - and he wrote a letter for me.

My siblings were Christened because that was the 'done' thing to do.
Neither of my parents ever went to church - and dad became a Moslem in 1968.

Neither of my children, and none of my grandchildren are christened.

That was interesting Gwyn.

I’ve known for years that anyone could baptise a baby in an emergency but assume that the entry in the parish register indicated a baptism by the clergy.

These names and baptisms can be a real pain. I have an ancestor Thomas Harvey who died in 1930. He appears as a 6 year old in the 1871 census with parents John Harvey and Isabella (nee Game). That ties in with his age at death but I could never find a birth registration for him. Then I realised that his parents didn't marry till he was about 4 and that John Harvey was some years younger than Isabella and might not be Thomas' father so I checked under Isabella's maiden name of Game. No sign of a Thomas Game born at the right time and right area anywhere. To cut a long story short I discovered him almost by accident. He was born in a workhouse in Lambeth and was baptised with 5 other workhouse babies at about 10 days old by a Geo. Greig. A bit more research and I found out that the Revd George Greig was Chaplain to the Lambeth Workhouses and there were lots of babies baptised by him and added to the parish records of St Mary, Lambeth later. I suspect he also decided my ancestor would be called Walter. The name doesn't appear anywhere else in our family and he was known throughout his life and was buried as Thomas. I never have found a birth registration for him under any name so perhaps he didn't get registered.

Forenames/Christian names and baptism records can certainly cause a lot of confusion to the poor family historian.