Birth registration question

[speleobat2]

If a woman was a resident of Aberdeen and decided to go to her mother's in Inverurie to give birth, where would the child's birth be registered?

Given that humans fudge the facts regularily, of course!

Just wondering if something like this might explain the confusion some of us encounter when we're trying to identify which John Taylor out of dozens really belongs to us!

Carol

[LesleyB]

hi Carol

If a woman was a resident of Aberdeen and decided to go to her mother's in Inverurie to give birth, where would the child's birth be registered

I hesitiate to even mention this, as it won't help you in your searching one jot... but I've sometimes seen children who have been registered twice; once where the event happened and once where the family usually resided.

Best wishes
Lesley

[ninatoo]

I think it would be registered where the child was born...but having said that, I have two registrations for the same birth, one in Glasgow where the parents lived, and one in Ayrshire where the child was born.

[LesleyB]

Snap Nina!

[ninatoo]

I have just looked at my two records in question and the one for Glasgow has a note beside the entry saying "Parish of birth Kilmarnock". Both registrations occurred on the same day. I am imagining the mother went to Glasgow and registered the birth and the registrar realised the baby was actually born in Kilmarnock after filling everthing in. Then he must have told her to go to Kilmarnock and register the baby there.....which she did on the very same day (and only a week after the baby was born too, pretty mobile for a post natal woman in 1907).

Food for thought anyway.

Nina

[speleobat2]

That's sort of what I was thinking. (If it's possible to complicate a situation, someone is sure to have done it!)

My next question is "Were babies ever baptized in two different parishes?"

I haven't come across this, but people were married twice frequently--once in her parish and once in his. Suppose the mother took ill immediately after giving birth. Would the father then have had the baby baptised in his mother-in-law's parish and later when the mother could travel, had the baby baptized again in their home parish?

Carol k

[Anne H]

Hi Carol,

I have a couple of babies registered in the district where they were actually born, and a week or so later, registered again in the district of usual residence...I just assumed that was the way it was done.

As for babies being baptized twice...unless things were done differently way back then, as far as I know, you can only be baptized once...at least in the Catholic church these days.

speleobat2 wrote:

...but people were married twice frequently--once in her parish and once in his.

If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will be along to correct me, but I think what you're seeing is a record of their banns being recorded in each parish. Banns were usually called three times and then the marriage took place, and if you're lucky, on the later record you might even find that the date of actual marriage is also there.

Regards,
Anne H

[LesleyB]

Hi Carol

I haven't come across this, but people were married twice frequently--once in her parish and once in his.

I'd agree with Anne on the above: the banns were called in both parishes, and thus the mention in the Parish Register. The banns were called so that anyone with any objections to the marriage taking place, or who knew of any reason why it should not happen had an opportunity to raise thier objection. The marriage usually took place in the parish of the bride (but there are exceptions...of course! )

Best wishes
Lesley

[Chris Paton]

If a woman was a resident of Aberdeen and decided to go to her mother's in Inverurie to give birth, where would the child's birth be registered?...

...Just wondering if something like this might explain the confusion some of us encounter when we're trying to identify which John Taylor out of dozens really belongs to us!

Carol

The law states that a birth has to be registered within 21 days, and can be done so anywhere in Scotland. It may be that a woman may have returned to her home parish to have her child christened, out of a sense of tradition (as my two sons, who we took to my wife's home of Piltown, Kilkenny, to be christened, even though we live in Scotland), but it does not necessarily mean she will have had the birth registered there. On the flip side, she may have been ill after birth, and the family may have stayed in her home parish, and found it easier to have the birth registered there, rather than in their home back in Aberdeen etc. But then again, three days after birth, they may have moved to another house which wasn't in Inverurie or Aberdeen, and had the child registered in Peterhead or wherever they had moved to! There are no hard and fast rules - if only!

On the marriages front, absolutely, the banns were recorded in both parishes, which is what you are seeing, and as Lesley says, with the wedding traditionally performed at the bride's parish, though not necessarily in the church - more often than not it was done at her parents' home.

In Ireland, from 1845 to 1863, you do sometimes find that Roman Catholic couples' marriages are recorded twice, in the RC parish register and then the statutory Protestant registers (started in 1845), and that was because there were two ceremonies. RC marriages were deemed irregular until 1864, so some folk had the Catholic ceremony, then had a 'legal' ceremony in a local Anglican church so that the marriage could be officially recorded. State registration of Catholic marriages in Ireland started in 1864, after the requirement to have a civil registrar present was dropped from the statute books, and all that stopped. But nothing like this happened in Scotland.

Chris

[ninatoo]

The law states that a birth has to be registered within 21 days, and can be done so anywhere in Scotland.

This is the law now, but what was the law then, back in the times we're all looking?

Nina