Genealogy Chat

I agree that it would have been perfectly possible that she did get pregnant very soon after the first birth, may be only days.

The suggestion that women wait 6 weeks is fairly recent.


More important to women back then was the requirement to go to church to be "churched" ................ women who had given birth were not considered clean until that had happened. Churching was usually done within 2 weeks after a birth ............ or as soon as a woman could get out of bed and make it to the church.


Of course, not all men were willing to wait until churching had taken place ...... they would demand their rights whenever they wanted them.



I know that churching still took place in parts of Lancashire until at least 1940.



sylvia

The GRO(I) index thru 1958 (excl N. Ireland post-partition) is available at:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list#page=1®ion=BRITISH_ISLES

One can purchase certs (or cheaper still, the uncertified images of the rego) via:
http://www.groireland.ie/

Oh my word Sylvia. You have just stirred some memories. When my daughter was born in 1970 and I was preparing to leave hospital I said to one of the other mothers on the ward that I would be able to take my new born out the following day if the weather remained warm and sunny. She said that I shouldn't think about going out until myself and the baby had been 'churched'.
I really hadn't got a clue what she was talking about but the 4 or 5 other new mother's on the ward all agreed with her and said that they would all be 'churched' before they did anything else. I was completely lost.until one of them explained that all new mothers should be blessed and there was a special service every Tuesday morning at the Parish Church specifically for this purpose.
Being the heathen that I am I didn't go. The service itself died out completely not long after.
So this practice existed in the backwoods of Lincolnshire until the early 1970's.

Hi Rose. Unfortunately I have no birth certificates. Curiously though my g-grandfather was baptised twice, firstly in Ireland and then in London.

I was reading last week of a woman who had twins then triplets 9 months later they say she got pregnant again after two weeks !!!!

hello

i had my children in the early 1970 s in london and some mothers mainly catherlic were churched so astra it was not just in the backwoods that this happened

sally w

Paul

is your g grandfather's baptism in London on the London records on ancestry?


If so, it might say on there when he was born.



Interesting to read that churching went on into the 1970's ........ My sister-in-law had her children in the 1950s, and I don't remember her being churched.




sylvia

You can still be churched today, if you want. It has gone out of fashion, but the service is still available. Traditionally it took place 40 days after the birth, immediately before the baby's baptism, and was a blessing and purification of the mother.