Was the mother's name on a birth certificate..

[Porridgespoon]

Even if a teen pregnancy was covered up and her mother or other relative "claimed" the baby.

Another thread got me thinking. My Dad has a 20 year gap between his and his next youngest brother. His mother would have been late 40s when he was born.

He also spent some time living with his brother and young wife as a child (but not a baby).

Dad never seems to have wondered about his parentage - he went to stay with his brother because mum was unwell.

I'm wondering how they covered things up when people took on babies born out of wedlock?

The mother's name would have had to be on the birth certificate and she would have had to have registered the birth.

If 'granny' had pretended it was hers and gone to register it she might have got away with it, but they were taking a risk.

It definitely could be the case but my mum has 19 years between her and her youngest brother and my poor uncle used to to think my mum was his mum not his sister as his siblings told him this as a joke. He believed it for years but never said anything as he was told it was a secret. To be fair my mum and dad looked after him a lot when he was a child and they were like a second set of parents to him.

Birth certificates are only as accurate as the information provided and it depends upon the honesty (and knowledge) of the informer.

I suspect that years ago many people lied to ensure a birth certificate didn’t reveal family secrets. If a baby was born at home and hospital records weren’t required, it would have been easier to conceal.

Yes, I was just thinking about when I registered DSs' births.

If I'd taken someone else's baby, with their agreement, would anyone have been any the wiser?

There was a time it was very possible for the Granny or Auntie to register the baby as theirs.

On one family tree I did the grandparents had 5 illegitimate children of their own, then married coincidentally just weeks before their 6th child - the first that he could register on his own - was born. We know from letters that the 6th child was actually born to his 17 year old daughter.

There was one case though where the family were convinced that the youngest child must belong to an older sister or cousin because she was 11 years younger than her next sibling. But when we looked into it there were actually 7 other siblings between the two who had died very young - 2 from tb and 5 from measles. So the apparent age gap wasn't actually as it seemed.

Where was he born? Many birth certs in Republic of Ireland were falsified to show that a baby had been born to an adoptive parent. Identity completely erased before the advent of DNA testing.
I suspect that people in England with a close relationship to a midwife or GP might also have been able to persuade them to register a birth to a grandmother “in the best interests of all concerned”.

The only definitive way to know is DNA testing which today is easier than ever. Order a kit, spit in a tube.

I know of one person who passed off their teen baby as their sister but it is the worst "secret" ever because everyone knows and I always worried someone would tell the child out of spite.

Is this thread making anyone else think of EastEnders?

When we registered our babies births we had to bring in a form signed by the midwife to prove he was our baby. Our eldest is 19 though so I don't know what went on before that. I would imagine it was a lot easier to conceal this sort of thing in times gone by though. I don't know anyone who has done that, although i've heard of a fair few babies born "prematurely", weighing the same weight as your average newborn, around 6-7 months after their parents wedding.

We didn't. We just turned up with the baby at the registrars'. It was before the internet.

The person I know was registered as his grandmother's child. His mother was a teenager., and he believed she was his sister. The truth was only revealed to him later in life. He's now late 60s.

I think it would be much harder today as nearly all births have some kind of medical oversight. In days gone by when more babies were born at home, I think it might have been possible for granny or auntie to register the birth as theirs. Girls were sent away to stay with relatives until after the birth. I assume if they went to a UK mother and baby home, then the biological mother would have been listed, but then so many of the babies would then have been placed for adoption.

The mother named on my BC dose not exist.

My mother put a fake name on my and my siblings BC.
Our surname is not the family name she chose a random surname and used her nick name and that was that.

Why you will ask because her first 4 children were girls she wanted boys, she did have a boy and he was registered in her real name.
And she wonders why we have no contact with her.

EDITED to add it was not uncommon for parents to give the wrong names at registering due to being hungover or still a bit pissed.
I was told this by a man that worked in the register office.

I was into genealogy and researching my family tree for a while and was in some genealogy FB groups. Apparently lying on certificates was far more common than people realise and was often only "exposed" when people forgot and gave different information during censuses etc.

Having said that large gaps aren't un heard of so the only way of knowing would be a DNA test.

My youngest uncle always said that my mother was really his mother as a joke, I think!

Absolutely. Me and my siblings were all born at home. My sister was born before the midwife arrived. It must have been easy to conceal the truth, in many cases.

Lying on certificates and censuses was very common. No computers made it much easier to do, especially if people moved area.

Also people understood it. Registrars would sometimes turn a blind eye to someone who was registering a child as theirs to protect their teenage daughter. People knew why they were doing it.

Some weren't supportive at all. One I encountered literally noted on a birth certificate that the woman was married and stated that the husband was the father, but he was aware that he had been away with the military for 12 months, but he was not aware of any leave which would have allowed the child to be conceived. DNA has shown the baby (now in their 80s) is the full sibling of the siblings still alive.

My grandmother born about 1914 London told me, that the grandmother would pretend to be pregnant.The girl unmarried mother would stay inside, the house and not come out until after the birth, everyone knew what was going on but said nothing, then the family would pretend the grandparents where the actual parents.She said she saw it once or twice when she was a young girl so probably 1920s.

My grandfather was an adult when he discovered that his older sister was actually his mother. Apparently it was a big family secret but is obviously a lot more common than we thought.

I've been doing genealogy for 15 years and I've done so many family trees for people in that time and I can only think of two families where there wasn't an instance of a child being adopted/brought up/passed off as someone else's. It was very very common.

My ex husband found this out when we needed his birth certificate to get married. He asked his ‘mum’ for it and she was cagey saying she’d lost it and he’d have to do without it. He was curious, applied for a replacement and was stunned to find out his older sister was his mum. The whole family knew except him and to this day nobody will tell him who his bio father is.

This is both funny and so sad - I was the youngest in my family and my siblings told me for years that I was adopted. There were times I really wanted to believe it, but we all looked so a like.

Your poor uncle!

I have a "short" birth certificate. My parents are not named on it. Just my details handwritten on.

It was prior to a change in law regarding nationality and parentage in the early 80s so possible that the certificates changed when the law changed?

It was still an era when teenage births were covered up, although my family were honest. I could plausibly have been my GM's baby.

When I started a bit of genealogy a few years back, the best piece of advice I was given by an old hand was 'if you are struggling to find a mother, look to see if there is daughter about 15 to 17 years older than the relation you are dealing with. ' In so many cases that is the true mother.

Many people had a short certificate because they didn't cost, and then when they did cost were very low cost. The long certificates were relatively expensive, and not often needed. The details were all recorded in the register, but people didn't always (didn't often in some areas) but the long cartilage.

I didn't have a long certificate until I was applying for a visa for Australia.