early 19th century illegitimacy

[myworkingtitle]

Really interested to discover that my great-great-great-great grandfather was illegitimate - very clear in his baptism records. I think that he must have been accepted by his mother’s family as his grandfather & great grandfather were both surgeons, & that is what he became too. He was born in 1806. Does anyone have any idea how I might be able to find out any more information? The baptism record, & then his appearance in the census from 1841 onwards is all I’ve found, and then his mother’s baptism & her father’s details.

Have you used a subscription site like findmypast? Did he get married?

Yes, I’ve been using Ancestry, and I have his marriage, his children etc, he married in the 1830s - when he is recorded as surgeon - and I have the baptism records of the children from the same church. Then by 1841 he is in London, still a surgeon, and he is there on every census till his death in the 1860s.

The bit I am interested in is what happened between birth and training as a doctor! My assumption about a respectable girl getting pregnant out of wedlock in 1806 was that it would be covered over, child given away etc. But it looks like he was accepted by the family (a maternal aunt lives with him in the London census, he trains in a respectable profession that is the same as his grandfather & great grandfather etc). I would love to find any further details - where he went to school maybe? Where he was living between 1806 and his marriage? Etc. I know that information will be hard to find but not sure where it might be either...

You might get more information on him from these Ancestry record sets:

UK & Ireland, Medical Directories, 1845-1942
UK Medical Registers, 1859-1959

The British Newspaper Archives might be very helpful. As a surgeon he's quite likely to appear in reports of accidents and court cases. The other surgeons in the family might well come up, too.

www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

It depends how good the coverage of his local area is, though, and newspapers in the 1820s and 30s are usually thin. If you're lucky, you might hit on a obit.

The British Medical Journal can be quite good for hatches/matches/dispatches, too. 1860s perhaps a little early for a very full obit, but you never know.

www.bmj.com/archive

The Royal College of Surgeons have catalogued exam results back to 1800. I don't know what that means in practice: maybe you have to visit or ask them for scans of registers. That's unlikely to be possible at the moment.

www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums-and-archives/archives/whats-in-the-archives/institutional-archives/

I am not sure that illegitimacy was such a big deal back then, the very puritanical attitudes were more from the Victorian era. Earlier it mattered if there was property to inherit, but a surgeon doesn't suggest a particularly wealthy family, I think in those days there was still distinction between doctor and surgeon? With surgeon as the down market profession.

Interesting though!

You’re right that being medical isn’t necessarily particularly wealthy at this stage - an apothecary/surgeon (terms were used fairly interchangeably for the same person) - but it is definitely a ‘middle class’ profession at this point, they would have kept servants, owned property etc. A physician didn’t touch patients at all & they were the top notch medics!

Good tip about the medical directories! He was a ‘surgeon accoucheur’ in London in 1845, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1829, licensed as a London apothecary in 1827, ‘surgeon accoucheur to the Royal Lying-in Hospital; Lecturer on Midwifery and the Diseases of Women and Children, at the School of Medicine, adjoining St George’s Hospital’.

Slightly distracted by kids & posted too soon.

Of course really what I want to find is his mother’s diary/letters all about his birth & the circumstances around it. If only!

See, you joke about that but... I'm in the middle of ordering my ancestor's letters from an archive. No, really. There's a thing I didn't expect to be doing when I started my humble family tree a few years ago.

Have a good old nose through the centralised catalogue at The National Archives: it has links to other archives.

discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Oh well if he's attached to an institution like the School of Medicine, a good old poke around in their records might get you on to something.

That’s a really good point. I’ll investigate. Who was your ancestor?

(You can tell me vaguely, you don’t have to give names & dates!)

St George's, Univ of London, Archives and Special Collections.

www.sgul.ac.uk/about/our-professional-services/information-services/library/about-the-library/archives

He was a publisher, so he corresponded with lots of literary figures (about deadlines and contracts, as well as content).

Archives have tended to preserve his letters because of the correspondents, not because of him.

if his mother had been poor then it would be an idea to look for the church/parish records for church wardens records of the event of his birth - but as they weren't likely to be poor its unlikely but not impossible that the church warden records - if they survive for her parish at the time, would yield any information as the less said the better.

Does he have any interesting middle names?

Have you continued to research what happened to his Mother? Ie did she go on to have more children? Can you find their baptisms? Did she marry? That can give you a clue to what happened in the years just after his birth.

Just saw your comments.

ivykaty44 sadly his first & middle name are pretty common - surname is unusual though. interestingly in a trade directory for his maternal family’s town 20 years before he was born there is a bookseller/printer listed whose name is the same as my ancestor’s first & middle names... Makes me wonder if that’s the father, or the father’s family anyway.

profyaffle no his mum didn’t marry or have any more children, died in her 50s. Her sister lives with him & his children in her old age though.

National archives is a good bet. I have found lots of things related to my family in the 1600s-1800s. It was unexpected and really interesting.