What a terrible phrase: “A Base Child”. I looked it up to be sure, but it meant what I thought it did – a child born out of wedlock. People use phrases like “born on the wrong side of the blanket” in conversation, but to see the parish curate or vicar write something in the register seemed extraordinarily harsh, especially as the “sin” wasn’t the child’s.
My maternal great-grandmother’s immediate family lived in London, but her parents were both born and brought up in Devon in the Kingsbridge area and have roots going back several generations in Dodbrooke, Charleton and Stoke-Damarel.
I was surprised – perhaps because I don’t know much about small town morals in England of the early 1800s – to see so many parish baptisms with only the mother, or with an unmarried couple. Possibly that’s a sampling quirk, or there wasn’t much to do in that part of Devon at the time! It also may have been connected with the operation of the Poor Law and making sure the children were registered as “settled” in their parish in the event they needed relief at some point.
On my mother’s side of the family, I have several “base children”, although Mum didn’t know about any of them except for a rumor that her great-grandmother, Jane Ford (née Kelland), had some illegitimate blue blood (i.e. royalty or upper levels of the aristocracy). Perhaps people would say that whenever there were lineage issues because it sounded better than “bastard”, but I haven’t seen anything to corroborate that story.
To keep the story simple, I’m referring (lovingly) to Mary Couch Giles, my 3rd great grandmother, as the senior hussy and her daughter, Jane Kelland, my 2nd great grandmother, as the junior hussy. The junior hussy’s daughter, my great grandmother Mary Jane Ford, is Ms. Propriety as the first woman in three generations to have all her children legitimate!
The first of the base children was the senior hussy’s first child. She did – three years later – marry the boy’s father, and for some reason, the baptism entry in the parish register listed both parents, unlike so many where it was just he baby’s mother. Possibly this indicated they were a couple – the baby got the Kelland name, not his mother’s last name (Giles). It’s a puzzle that they waited so long, but on March 13th 1828, they married in the parish church in Charleton. The impetus for the marriage was probably that Mary was pregnant again – William Kelland was born just three months after the wedding.
Ten years later, September 3rd 1838, their seventh and last child, Jane Kelland (my 2nd great grandmother) was born, and a year after that, Mary Kelland was a widow. The senior hussy wasn’t quite done with husbands or babies though – not necessarily in that order either!
The 1851 census has the senior hussy with a new name, Mary Stone, and she is living on Ebrington Street in Dodbrooke, Devon, with her new husband, William, and a 7 year old son listed as William Stone.
As Mary and William’s marriage was less than a year old and her new husband, 16 years younger than Mary, was listed as “Batchelor” not “Widower” on the wedding registry, I went looking for another “base child” in the Dodbrooke parish registry for 1844. Mary Kelland was listed as a widow and perhaps the parish generously ignored the long gap since John Kelland died (at least 3 years).
The senior hussy outlived her second husband too, and in the 1871 census, she was a widow living with two grandsons – two more “base” children. Mary’s youngest daughter, Jane Kelland, the junior hussy, was following in her mother’s footsteps.
Jane Kelland’s childhood had been one of moving from one relative to another. At age 2, in 1841, Jane is living with her uncle, William Giles, and his wife, on Barrack Street in Dodbrooke, next door to her widowed mother and most of her older siblings. The senior hussy was then a busy single mother – listed as a “labouring woman” in the census – trying to keep the family together. Ten years later, the junior hussy is still living with her aunt and uncle, but her mother has moved away with her new husband – still in Dodbrooke though. Between 12 and 22, Jane’s life is transformed in all ways but one – she’s still a single woman.
In 1861, the junior hussy is a mother of two boys, John and William Henry Thomas, and is living with the senior hussy’s second husband, William Stone. Her occupation is “Charwoman” – cleaning other people’s houses for a living is hard work and not very well paid. Her Mum is not at home for the census – she is working, possibly temporarily, for a family in West Alvingon as a nurse (likely a nursery nurse looking after a newborn for a few months).
There is no way of knowing if Jane’s two boys had the same father – I think it’s more likely two different fathers as William was born in a village around Plymouth whereas John was born in Dodbrooke. Both boys were not baptized right away, suggesting that Jane was hoping to marry, move away and straighten out her life, but eventually moved back to where there was family help available.
The junior hussy finally (16 years after her first child was born) married a young man from Dodbrooke, William John Ford, who was in the odd position of being eight years younger than his wife, and only eight years older than her son John! The marriage was in Dodbrooke in 1870, but the next year, in the 1871 census, the new family is living in Plymouth with their 2 month old daughter Mary Jane. William is a Cordwainer (shoemaker), although later he switches to being a carpenter, I think working for his stepson WHT Kelland who had started a building business in the Stoke Newington area of London.
Ten years later (1881 census) the Fords had moved from Plymouth to Stoke Newington and were living at 25 Bouverie Rd with William Henry Kelland (the junior hussy’s second son) and his wife. I have to image this was all somewhat strange, but from the notes my mother left, it seems that William John Ford was not very business minded or good with money and WHT Kelland was, so kudos to the latter being a good son and taking care of his Mum!
Jane’s daughter, Mary Jane Ford (known as Janie) lived much more conventionally than her mother and grandmother. She married William Procktor, a clerk for a hardware merchant, and had three children. The oldest child, Winifred, born in 1898, was my grandmother. Jane’s youngest son William had two boys, the oldest of whom, Reginald (Reg), born in 1889, was apparently the apple of my grandmother’s eye! But they were first cousins, so courtship wasn’t an option. Given Reg Kelland’s later marital history – left his first wife to run off with a dancer 17 years younger than him – perhaps it was just as well.