Dave Annal had previously given this talk to all Society member's via Zoom in July 2021. However, as the majority of Deal Branch members had missed it we invited Dave to give his fascinating illustrated talk in person at our Meeting.
During the talk Dave gave us tips about how to sift through the family history information we find to get at the truth. Often our ancestors were economical with the truth or simply didn’t know the answers to what was being asked of them but, on other occasions, they wilfully lied.
There are questions we should be asking ourselves such as – how easy was it to lie? What reasons did they have to lie? And how can we recognise their lies? To answer these questions we need to understand how records were created, how reliable they were, and why they were created (not for family historians!). Information that people might lie about included ages, names, birthplaces, parentage and marital status. To comprehend this fully we needed to look at the legislation behind records such as the registrations of births, marriages and deaths and the census records. Dave said he couldn’t fully cover the legislation in this talk but advised us to read up on the sources. In the legislation there were various penalties given for making false entries or for giving false information to the authorities. If convicted under the terms of Rose’s Parish Register Act of 1812, you could be transported for 14 years, while the Births and Deaths Registration Act of 1874 carried a maximum sentence of penal servitude for up to 7 years, so there were incentives not to lie. When the 1840 Population Act came in, those who refused to fill in the census or who gave false answers could be fined anything between 40 shillings and £5. So again, laws had been put in place to dissuade the population from lying but individuals still did it. In reality, there were few checks in place and no proof was needed, so the opportunity was there if you wanted to deceive.
Illegitimacy seems to have been a big driver to lying on birth/christening and marriage records. Illegitimate children faced severe legal and social discrimination so would often amalgamate names in the family, to create a father, to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy. When they married locally, illegitimate children felt they couldn’t name a father on a marriage record as this would be known by the community, but once a person moved away from the area, they might feel more able to get away with inventing a father’s name to cover their origins. It was easier still to lie on a census return as the forms were completed in people’s own homes. Women might become ‘widows’ or a child may be described as a ‘niece’ to cover up an illegitimate child.
Adulterous and bigamous marriages also encouraged deceit on records. The Church would not allow marriages between close relatives i.e. a widowed man and his sister-in-law, but these laws, which seem outdated to us, forced some people to lie. Divorce did not become available until 1858, but was too expensive for most people, so often couples co-habited until the first husband/wife had died or pretended they were married anyway. Age is often another casualty of truth, especially when there was a large age gap between a husband and wife. Quite often the man would get younger and the wife a little older so these ages may not tally with their birth/christening records. If a woman was older than her husband, it was quite common for several years to be removed from her age upon their marriage.
Dave said that when it came to what people would not lie about on official records, the answer was NOTHING. Obviously people did make mistakes or got confused about what they were being asked but illegitimacy and the legal system made lying tempting or even necessary. His last piece of advice was to regard the records as true but if the facts didn’t add up, you might have to assume that some lies were being told.
Report by Lesley Smith - Deal Branch Secretary of Kent FHS