Illigitamacy amongst the Filey fishing community
From the book "Filey - a Yorkshire fishing town" by Irene E Allen and Andrew A Todd
ILLIGITAMACY AND BRIDAL PREGNANCY
Inevitably, illigitamacy appeared in the fishing community. One interesting result of the use of surnames as second christian names is that it enables us to establish the paternity of many illigitimate children. For example, this entry figures in the St Oswald's baptismal register:
6th March 1856 John Williamson illigitimate son of Elizabeth Williamson(crossed out) Jenkinson sic.
A later entry in the St Oswald's marriage register clearly relates to this child's parents:
22nd November 1856 John Williamson, fisherman son of John Williamson, fisherman, married Betsy Jenkinson, daughter of Thomas Jenkinson, fisherman.
Careful use of the parish registers and census returns reveals another such case. Edward Scales was born prior to the marriage of his parents, Edward Scales and Sarah Jane Jenkinson in the returns for his parents' family. One would imagine that in many similar cases, a pre-marital indiscretion of this type would have been concealed by the entering of such a child on the schedule under his father's surname. The fact that this was not done here suggests, perhaps, that such illegitamacy, if followed by a marriage, was readily acknowledged, involving little stigma. It may also indicate that in a very close community,of which the census enumerator would have been part, it would have been futile to try to conceal such a situation). Edward Scales Jenkinson ("Neddy Rasp", c1879-1942) bore his true name throughout his 65 years. He became a respected member of the Primitive Methodist Chapel being a lay preacher and superintendent of the Sunday School. It is significant that the Filey community judged a man by his actions, and imputed no shame to illigitimacy.
A third case is that of Matthew Crompton Jenkinson (c1869-1946), whose mother, Margaret Jenkinson married his father, John Crompton, after his birth. As we have seen, he commemorated his father's surname in the middle name of seven of his eight children!
We found that the Jenkinsons were very conscientious in baptising their children before the 1850's - we found only one or two chil burials before then without a corresponding baptism. We found no children in the 1841, 1851, and 1861 censuses for which there wasn't a baptism at St Oswald's. After then, many must have been baptised at the Primitive Methodist Chapel, and we have been unable, so far, to trace its registers.
The reliability of the baptismal registers allowed us to do a little research into what is known as "bridal pregnancy". It is well known that a huge number of the brides were pregnant (with the couple's first child) in the 19th century, and before. Of the many male Jenkinsons that married between 1813 and 1908, we were able to identify the baptisms of their first child in 29 cases. In eight of these cases, this first baptism took place within 8.5 months of the marriage. We took a wider sample of the Filey fishing community by looking for the first baptism from marriages involving all Cammish, Castle, Jenkinson, Leng, Mainprize and Scales grooms in the same period. We found 48 marriages where the baptism of the chil could be found. This time we found 15 cases of a first baptism within 8.5 months of the marriage.
As all these grooms were fishermen we suspect that about the third / one quarter were pregnant when they married. This is only a sall sample, admittedly, but its probably corresponds with the general findings of most family history researchers!
OTHER ARTICLES
• Tragedies in the Jenkinson fishing family in Filey
• Trawling and overfishing - Filey fishing
• Robin Hood's Bay - The Storm family website
• Filey and the gales of 1860,1867,1869 AND 1880
• The Crimlisk fishing family history in Scarborough Filey and Hull
• A common ancestry - The Filey Jenkinsons
• Thomas Crimlisk - First of the Crimlisks
• Suzanne Pollard and her Filey Fishing relatives
• Church first and Church last - Filey methodists and St Oswald's
• Famous fishing families - the Whitby Storr family and the Leadleys
• Drink and alcohol in the Filey fishing community
• The 200 year history of scarboroughs RNLI
• An early history of Filey and its fishing community
• Sea shanties and the filey Fishermen's choir
• Luggers and yawls in the filey fishing industry
• Filey and its early fishing industry
• Primitive Methodism amongst the Scarborough Filey and Flamborough fishing communities
• The history of the Scarborough fishing industry
• The Womens work in the Filey fishing industry
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