Incest - an illegal act?

Birth indexes in the UK

Jamaican records

Researching artistes 

Addresses in the census 

Incest – an illegal act? Caroline Macauley
My Great Grandfather apparently married his half niece. His mother had been married and widowed before he was born. Her daughter by that previous marriage had a daughter and it was this girl that my great grandfather 'married'.
I don't know if they were ever officially married and have found no record of that marriage. I know he was Methodist (in fact a lay preacher to the British forces in Ireland). I think he converted to that faith and I don’t know exactly when. On his army records he is listed as married but they probably did not look for a cert. On the Census of 1881 he says he is married. On his child's birth cert the mother of the child carries his name.
Would this marriage have been legal then given the close familial ties?
He was born in Somerset and was in the army there and the local area for many years.

Dear Caroline
If the situation were to prove to be as you describe it, today your great grandfather would not be able to marry his half-sister’s daughter, as legally this would be regarded as incest and illegal. However, the definition of incest has been a matter of controversy and has varied over time. Ecclesiastical courts held jurisdiction up to 1857 but, according to Sybil Wolfram’s book “In-Laws and Outlaws”, from 1857 to 1908 “no court had jurisdiction over incest and there was no penalty”. If your great grandfather contracted his marriage during this time, therefore, he would not have been committing an illegal act, even if some of his contemporaries would definitely have disapproved of the relationship. This would fit with his described background in the forces and his position in the Methodist Church.
As well as the well-known indexes to the civil registers of marriages, there are other, less well-known marriage indexes. On 1837online, you will find copies of the indexes to army chaplains’ marriage returns from 1796 to 1880 and to their successors, the more simply named army marriages, from 1881 to 1995. These can be found in the overseas records section. In addition, to these, there are regimental marriage registers but unfortunately these have not been indexed or made publicly available by the General Register Office.
Finally, it is of course also possible that your great grandfather did not marry. Many such relationships existed in the nineteenth century: for example, one need only think of the novelists George Eliot and Wilkie Collins, both of whom lived unmarried with their partners.

Birth indexes in UK - Pat Elson 
If you have a date of birth but not the place of birth, how do you find the person? No family to ask and no more information. This applies to 1897 and 1900 both in the UK. Is there anywhere I can find a listing of birth dates?

Dear Pat
One of the beauties of the system of civil registration of birth, marriage and death in England & Wales is that it is centralised. Therefore, you do not necessarily have to know where someone was born in order to obtain their birth certificate (although of course knowing the place helps when a common name is involved and there will be more than one person of that name born at around the same date). Simply go to the birth indexes in the search 1837-1983 section of the 1837online website, fill in relevant search fields and you will be returned a number of pages of the indexes which might contain your person’s birth entry. Each year is divided into quarters and each of these relates to the quarter of the year in which the birth was registered, which is not necessarily the same quarter as that within which the person was actually born: for instance, a person born in June 1897 might not appear in the June quarter but in the following (September) quarter of 1897. For this reason, it is particularly important to look in the March quarter of the next year when looking for someone born in November or December.
Once you find the birth index entry for your person, you can then use the reference (quarter, registration district, volume and page) to order a copy of the birth certificate itself from the General Register Office (GRO).
If you draw a blank in English & Welsh records, you might need to consider the records of the other jurisdictions of the British Isles: remember, in this regard, that the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey keep their own records. 

Jamaican records - Peter Green
I have been tracing my Green family (very difficult) for over 10 years and I thought I had done rather well in getting back to 1740. However my relative called himself John although he was baptised William John, born to a John & Catherine Green in 1816 in Woolwich, Kent. But on the census return for 1861 his 'Mother' is marked as Sarah born West or East Indies, Jamaica British Subject. What exactly does this term mean and can you suggest a way of verifying?

Dear Peter
Firstly, there are two possibilities about the discrepancy in the name of William John Green’s mother. On the one hand, just as William John called himself plain John, so Catherine and Sarah could be one and the same person whose full name was Sarah Catherine or Catherine Sarah. Alternatively, William John’s father may have been widowed and then remarried, so that Catherine is the birth mother and Sarah the step-mother.
Turning to the place of birth of Sarah, the wording given on the 1861 census return indicates that she was born in Jamaica to British-born parents. Unfortunately, documenting her birth or baptism in Jamaica could prove very difficult, if not impossible. First of all, it would be necessary to discover her maiden surname, which is likely to necessitate searching for and documenting her marriage to John Green the elder. If you achieve this, you will find some Jamaican births will be among the overseas records on 1837online: however, the majority of these are likely to relate to army families. Most parish records for Jamaica remain on the island and are very difficult to access. The Latter Day Saints’ Family History Library in Salt Lake City has microfilms of various (but incomplete) parish registers and these can be ordered up at your nearest Family History Centre. However, even then, you would need to search speculatively parish by parish. 

 

Researching artistes - Stephen Kay 
My problem is probably quite rare. My paternal grandfather joined a travelling theatre group, playing the music halls and assumed the name of Walter Bishop. I believe he was married using that name and my father’s birth was registered under the name of Bishop with Walter Bishop as the father. He appears on the 1901 census as a 24 year old actor with a travelling company and has entered his birth place as Middlesbrough. According to family recollections, he was the son of an Anglican minister, possibly a Canon and was disowned, possibly because of his theatrical ambitions. My father was born in October 1908 in Hull, Yorkshire and Walter Bishop died of consumption shortly after. My grandmother then married W.H.Kay. I have no way of knowing my grandfather’s real name. Can it be traced possibly through the music hall connection?

Dear Stephen,
This might prove tricky if there are no surviving official records in which your grandfather gave his true given name at birth. There are plenty of surviving records about music hall, theatrical and other artistes, but most of these relate to leading performers rather than the supports and extras. Much may therefore depend upon exactly what role your grandfather played. You could do worse than start with Hiss and Boo’s webpage on researching artistes and then follow up some of the suggestions they give.

Addresses in census records - Frances Hooper
I have discovered addresses of family members by accessing the 1901 census. However several of these give the house name but no house number. As the house name is probably no longer in existence how can I find out the house number?

Dear Frances,
The answer here is very probably that you cannot!
You will notice on the censuses for many places, especially outside major towns, that addresses are identified simply by street name. Further down the scale, many villages and hamlets on the census do not even contain street information. To compound the problem, many buildings and indeed entire streets have, over the decades, been demolished, rebuilt, redeveloped, extended and/or re-named. This makes it very difficult to match a location on a census return with a particular surviving building today, unless it is highly distinctive or notable (properties such as public houses, farms and so on usually remain identifiable). Incidentally, although this is disappointing, it might be said to be preferable to believing that an existing building today is that in which your ancestor dwelt at the time of, say, the 1861 census when in fact only the street name is the same and its houses have been re-numbered and re-developed, so that what you are looking at is a completely different property not even standing on the same spot.  

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