Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

I have found a set of baptism records for Penistone, Yorkshire, in 1837. There are quite a few people recorded whose birth dates are in earlier years, e.g. my G G grandfather Enoch Taylor. He was baptised on July 2nd 1837 but his birth date in the record is February 27th 1820. There are several groups of these people in this batch of records who were born years before but were all baptised (in groups) on the same days. Does anyone have any thoughts on this oddity? Perhaps a visiting preacher motivated them?

It cost money to have a baptism performed, and so in many cases children were not baptised as infants. I've seen a case in another parish where the vicar performed a mass baptism free of charge to rectify the situation. Perhaps this happened from time to time in Penistone too.

The other possibility is that he needed to be baptised into a faith to marry. Have you checked the marriage date?

I think retiringtype's suggestion is more likely as there were so many people baptised in these groups. And he didn't marry until 8 years later.
All of the 8 people on just the one page where Enoch is recorded were at least 14 and the oldest was 25.

It sounds very likely then, it is known that there were travelling ministers and also not everybody lived in the locality of a parish with a resident chaplain.