Bastardy bonds
Laura Berry looks at an under-used source for revealing the paternity of children born to unmarried parents
Fathers who refused to sign a bond could be issued with a bastardy order by the justice of the peace
The paternity of an ancestor born out of wedlock is usually difficult to prove, frustratingly leaving a whole branch of your family tree void of names. All too often there’s a blank space where the father’s name should be on the child’s birth and baptism certificates and on their marriage certificate later in life, and the baby usually took the mother’s surname at birth. Finding a bastardy bond then could be like hitting the jackpot.
The Bastardy Act of 1575/6 granted special powers to churchwardens, overseers of the poor and justices of the peace ( JP) in England and Wales to question single mothers who might be in need of financial support, in order to ascertain the father’s identity and bring him to account. These bastardy examinations sometimes survive in local record offices.
Financial burdens
The aim of the legislation was to prevent the mother and her child becoming a financial burden on the parish coffers, and pressure was subsequently exerted on the father to sign a bastardy bond agreeing to pay for the child’s maintenance and indemnifying the parish against any future costs until the child was at least old enough to be apprenticed. Records of payments might be found in the account books of the overseer of the poor or the churchwarden. Fathers who refused to sign a bond could be issued with a bastardy order by the justice of the peace ( JP), obliging them to sign the bond or face prison.
In 1732/3 it became a legal requirement for pregnant single women to present themselves to the authorities before the child’s birth and notify them of the father’s identity. However, in practice many examinations continued to take place after the child’s birth, in which case the child’s sex may be stated, though it’s rare that the child’s name was given particularly before the 19th century.
Women were compelled to disclose as much information as they could to help the parish identify the father. In January 1790, 37-year-old Elizabeth Norther appeared before a JP in St Clement Danes and her examination statement discloses an extraordinary amount of detail. She revealed that she married John Norther about 14 years ago in South Kirby, Yorkshire, but before their marriage he worked as a servant for Edward Dickens of Lincoln’s Inn and slept over his employer’s stables in Portugal Street, St Clement Danes. However, her husband had died nine years ago. She was now pregnant with a child that was likely to become chargeable to the parish of St Clement Danes, and “one Christopher who lives as servant with a Mr Jones in Half Moon Street, whose surname she does not know, is the father, he having had carnal knowledge of this