Who Do You Think You Are, Lesley Sharp - a quick question.

[firesidechat]

On last nights programme there was a small section that I was slightly unsure about and wondered if anyone could help.

Lesley was looking at the marriage certificate of one of her ancestors with an expert of some sort. I didn't catch who he was. The ancestor was born out of wedlock, baptised and then the mother married someone two days later. The marriage certificate had the ancestors name as 'first name' Bush (the mothers maiden name) and the fathers name as 'first name' Patient (the man that the mother had married).

The expert said that this suggested that the father wasn't really the biological father because of the way the marriage certificate was written. Now I've always thought that it was written that way because the baby was born before the marriage and therefore had the mothers name. Why say that the father was 'first name' Patient if it wasn't? Wouldn't the fathers name part of the certificate be blank or have a different name if Patient wasn't the real father?

Hope that makes sense.

It's bugging me. Can anyone help?

When they looked at census records the child (William) , who was baptised as Bush just before the couple married, was recorded as a Patient. However when he later married he used the name Bush - his mother's maiden name - but stated his father as Charles Patient. I think it was still an assumption though that his actual father was another man as they didn't appear to find a birth certificate.

Think I may need to watch the programme again.

The expert just seemed to make an assumption without any real evidence at all. It all seemed a bit unprofessional.

I thought that Charles was his step father but the child felt that he was looked after by Charles as if he was his birth father.

This seemed a bit daft to me too. How likely is it that a baby born a couple of days before a wedding was another mans? You can't take anything on a marriage cert as gospel either.