Unmarried mother and 10 children with no father(s)

[Hmmph]

I have been researching my family tree.

I have a lady in it who was not married and had 10 children. None of the children have a father in the birth certificates. They were born either side of 1900 and fairly regularly.

Any ideas what this is??

Fascinating

@Hmmph

Also, I have just realised she had a 1 or 2 year old in 2011 who isn’t on the census?!

2011?

It could be that the father of the children was a journeyman farm labourer who would be elsewhere when the census was done. That was common in those times, work could be very seasonal and people would follow the work and might have accommodation attached to it (e.g. sleeping in barns, stables and workshops).

Not sure I want to go down the DNA route, but thank you for the suggestions!

What strikes me as most odd is the lack of shame about this. She is listed as single on the Censuses. No father on birth certificates or marriage certificates. Living with her widowed mother on the farm and having more or less a baby a year at some points!

The only logical explanation is that the father of her many children was married as suggested by pp. But I don’t know who it could have been! There’s no way she could have hidden that she was having this many children so it must have been fairly common knowledge about what was going on in her village, I would have thought. The father must have lived nearby as it was a fairly remote village and he seems to have been around to get her pregnant on a very regular basis.

Working in the hotel came much later after her mother had died (but they still lived on the farm). No idea what hotel or how she got to work.

There were a fair number of other unmarried mothers in the area at the time. However, everyone else seems to have had a child or two and then married the father. Apart from the lady I am interested in who never married.

I don’t want to disclose her name or too many location details I’m afraid as her descendants are living (I think all her children have now died, but she has living grandchildren).

One of her children has written a bit about their early life. They seemed to live on a kind of small holding farm with a few animals and the children all went to school to at least 7 as far as I can tell and some still at 12.

Very interesting :) if she still had children at school at age 12 it would seem that she must of had some financial help...someone up thread mentioned bastardy records, there was also parish help, bit like benefits, where the father's name could have been mentioned if she applied for parish help. Also a local paper search might bring up something. Family history, so interesting and addictive. Good luck with your search

OP are you able to tell if she EVER married? What does her death certificate say, or maybe look at the wedding certificates for some of the children (don't they usually name the father?).

My grandparents were both in service (my mum, the eldest, has 2 birth certificates and two birthdays - she only found out when it came to celebrating her parents' silver wedding) and they spent several years working many miles apart.

Imagine if they'd had Mumsnet!

This thread is far to much fun on a very wet grey summer afternoon.

I also managed to work out my family's version of this with some DNA detective work!

Are you able to track down any of the older children on the 1911 census or any of tjem.on the 1939 register? There's always a possibility that there was a later in life link to their father that could show up.

Also in the absence of 1921 can you see any electoral roll records for the 20's onwards? (can't remember when they start...). I had (a second) very similar situation and found that the secret great grandfather not mentioned on any other records suddenly appeared in the same house as my great grandmother on the electoral roll.

Ok if not DNA then definitely BNA newspaper archive. If you want to PM me I can have a quick check for you, as I have a subscription for my own genealogy.

I know there was a school that I think was run by the church that a test was sat to go to and at least one of the boys attended this school after the age of 7. It sounds like it was some kind of a trade school.

I’m not sure how much financial help she had. They were very poor. They lived on a farm though, so I don’t know if this supported them until they got jobs of their own (one of the boys became a shepherd boy). If she was supported by the father, I don’t think he was very generous!

The name thing went nowhere- it doesn’t exist apart from the child in my family!

I am fairly sure from birth certificates, marriage certificates, census records and her death that she was single and never got married or lived with a man.

Random thought here OP but can you find the ownership records for the farm once the parents have died?

I'm going down a similar route on my grandmothers side. Her father was illegitimate but the family go from being exceptionally poor before his birth to being shopkeepers and traders after his birth. I'm convinced there's some form of pay off to keep my ggfs father off the records so I'm going through trade papers etc to see who owned the shop that they took over.

They had a cow, 10 sheep, 2 goats, and lots of ducks apparently!

Yes, I think you’re right that who owned the farm might be a clue.

It still exists now and has apparently been in the current family for 3 generations so looks like it might have passed straight from “us” to them and sounds like they bought it rather than inherited it.

Well again. With the newspaper articles you can even search on an address and see notices for rent, ownership, leases, any court appearances where address was named, applications for extensions etc. It will probably tell you who owned it - “enquiries to Mr xxx of xxx” or at least which company dealt with its rent.

WindyRose given that we're talking 1901 in this country, it's hardly likely they had to "wait for a priest". (I mean, I'm pretty dubious about that claim anyway, but certainly not in the last couple of hundred years)

Let's face it, if you can get to the register office to register the child's birth (compulsory after ?1838) then you can get there to get married...

I think it seems unlikely that it is a long term affair with one person if the children don't appear to know the identity of their father. After all he would have been a pretty regular visitor when some the older children were almost grown up. Even if they weren't told, they would have put two and two together. If it was common knowledge locally, then someone would have told one of the children at least at some point.

I spoke to my mum who goes genealogy. She said
She was probably a mistress to a married man. Possibly the man of the house where she was a domestic servant. She was probably supported by him.

For her to keep having children she must have been his mistress. He might have been a prominent man who didnt want the scandal.

When you say one of her kids didn’t know who his father was - is that something you’ve seen in a written account or something you were told? I had a relative who was born illegitimate around that time and in similar circs and the shame was REAL. She knew who her dad was (parents married later) but if they hadn’t I’m sure she’d never have thought to speculate aloud/in print.

If it’s one father he must have been a frequent visitor to the area but not necessarily someone who lived there all the time. My family tree has a couple that had umpteen kids even though the husband worked abroad almost all his life. So that widens it out beyond the farm owner/workers.

On the other hand if she were a prostitute I sort of would like to think she’d have learnt how to try and prevent pregnancy. But why would rural farm workers pimp out their young daughter? I’m getting blackadder vibes.

Wondering whether the money (from kids father or from clients) dried up as she got older hence the need to find other work.

More than anything I’m just thanking god for the pill.

I live family history, I started my family free a few years back but didn't stick with it, I really wish I had

He might have known who his father was I suppose- I was assuming he didn’t as he had done family tree research and a family tree and left it blank!

I guess it could be shame. No one in the family has ever mentioned that this person is missing from history. I am also a bit loathe to ask in case there is still shame...

He might have known who his father was I suppose- I was assuming he didn’t as he had done family tree research and a family tree and left it blank!
It's possible he might not wish to commit to paper his father's identity even if it was general knowledge within the family.

I think you should ask if there is anyone who might know. It's a long time ago and no-one can be alive who would have been involved or affected at the time.

Did the kids all look the same? I guess you don't have photos

Very interesting reading

I don’t have photos, but I know someone else does (not sure of how many of the children). But I know there is a photo of the lady herself!

I just can’t get my head around any of the scenarios:

1. 22 year old becomes a mistress and has lots of children whilst living with her mother. (a) why didn’t her mother do something, like send her off to a relative? (b) why does the father want a mistress who keeps having children- she must have spent a lot of time unavailable (c) would this not have been a massive scandal in a tiny hamlet
2. 22 year old becomes a prostitute whilst living with her mother and having lots of children (a) where are all the clients from in this remote place? (b) why is her mother allowing this? (c) again- surely its a scandal!
3. 22 year old takes in other people’s babies (a) why? She’d be bringing scandal on herself (b) how is she registering them all as born to her (c) everyone in the hamlet would know they aren’t her children!

An woman having 13 children when single would be a big thing these days, let alone back then! But as far as I can tell nothing seems to have happened to stop her, despite other single women nearby having several babies being punished. It’s so strange!

Another scenario. Man is her partner and accepted as such by her family but made an earlier marriage that simply cannot be dissolved. Divorce is not available to the poor. Wife could have upped and left him but he can't marry his sweetheart. His work keeps him on the road.

Poor families didn't really have the luxury of middle class moralising.

One possibility - courtesy of relatives in Ireland who have told me that this was common prior to the legalisation of divorce there - is that she shacked up with a married man whose marriage had previously broken down, they lived as (and were treated by the neighbours as if they were) husband and wife, but couldn't put his name on the birth certificates.

I've known a few people who only discovered on having to apply for a copy of their birth certificate as adults that they were in fact "illegitimate" despite having grown up in what they experienced as a stable nuclear family with mum and dad both present.

Though your records seem to indicate that the only person she lived with was her mother.