Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

Have people researched any of the unnamed children on birth indexes? Recently on the Isle of Man message board there was an enquiry about an adopted child raised in the Isle of Man that had been born in Liverpool. There was a clue in the baptism record, a parental surname. There was one illegitimate birth on the GRO website for that parental surname in the right quarter in Liverpool but no first name. Free BMD has such births as Male Smith, Female Jones etc. In some cases these children died in the same quarter. The Isle of Man enquiry followed up on the birth certificate and found the mother not in the workhouse and not a domestic servant but in private lodgings and obviously of means as they had "no occupation". The name of the mother was a good match for a single woman of means living in Douglas, Isle of Man near where the child was later raised by what were probably his grandparents, one of their sons may have fathered the child.


Blue

Nothing so interesting I'm afraid, although using the extra mother's maiden names in the GRO indexes I was able to identify a "Baby Boy" in 1841, which intrigued me enough to order the certificate and sure enough discovered child number 2 mid way between two others, poor family as it must have died almost immediately and the eldest child also at age 11.

These things make us realise the hardships our families, whether married or single, had to struggle with.

The GRO birth index has been a revelation making it so much easier to identify births it will save people a lot of money preventing the purchase of wrong birth certificates.


Blue

That's true. It has saved me a fortune and led me to find a few stragglers that in all honesty I would probably not have found otherwise.

It's a real bonus when you can check against the 1911 and find the missing ones.