UK-WORKHOUSE-HOSP-L Archives

Archiver > UK-WORKHOUSE-HOSP > 2004-03 > 1079918385


From: Eve McLaughlin <>
Subject: Re: [UK-W&H] register adopted children
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 01:19:45 +0000
In-Reply-To: <003101c40f63$1fac9700$fe897ad5@oemcomputer>



>rs Elizabeth Palmer wife of Wm. Palmer of No. 56 Brunswick Street, Hackney
>Road, in apartments - is a lady's bootmaker - applied to the Committee to be
>allowed to adopt a deserted child sent to the Workhouse and brought in on
>the 30th June last from Dukes Court.
One of the important things was that the couple should be able to
support this child without asking for poor relief.
There was a local case where a man from Newport Pagnell went with his
wife and child to London - another child was born, then the wife died
and he married again. Then he died, and the stepmother refused to look
after the two boys.
Their uncle in Newport Pagnell sent for them and said he would bring
them up - a satisfactory solution. However, the local Guardians would
not allow it, on the grounds that uncle was a poor man who was not
currently but very well might in the future become a pauper. They would
support him, his wife and own children, but would not admit these two
nephews, whose father had become 'settled' in St Pancras.
So the children were sent back to St Pancras workhouse, where they
caught a fever and died in a couple of years, thus removing the problem.
I suspect that the Palmers could prove they were solvent - and also
thought a child might be a handy extra workhand, to to the bootmaking
jobs which needed little fingers.

>Not quite what we might think of as, 'legally adopted', but that seems to be
>the way it was handled prior to 1927.
sometimes the local clergy took a hand, or a local doctor.

--
Eve McLaughlin

Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians
Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

This thread: