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Re: Re: Re: Workhouse aliases
Posted by Member: Christine Wibberley
When: 21/07/2010 19:03:21
Email:
wibberleycm@ntlworld.com
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Have you found one or more of these children in a census after that in which they were in the workhouse? The workhouse discharge register will be useful if available as it will show the reason for discharge and perhaps where the children were discharged to or to whose care. In response to: when I say really I of course mean 'really' apologies 'of other in a workhouse' should read 'of another in a workhouse'. Any fostering or caring arrangement was likely to have been pre-workhouse. Children were separated from their own parents never mind other adults. In response to: Now when you say 'arranged for child name changes'... It is possible now to change name by deed or declaration, at one time posh people changed names by deed poll for all sorts of reasons and would have had the deed poll registered. It was often done to take up an inheritance under a 'name and arms clause'. However a name is changed by the use of a name not a document. What if anything do you know about the parents of these children? Did they have parents shown in the census or a mother at least with the same name as theirs. Could M/s Barker have married Mr Smith and the children taken the same name as their mother on marriage so that they were really Barker but known as Smith. People very unlikely to take on the children of other in a workhouse as they wouldn't get to see them. Possibly the children taken in by a well meaning family of Smiths outside the workhouse who then couldn't cope hence the workhouse. There could be all sorts of scenarios possibly none of them documented apart from the workhouse details. Have you considered looking at the original workhouse records if they exist? If they do that may give a reason for the children being in the workhouse, who their friend or relative was and whether they were admitted with anyone else. All alias means is that they had been known variously by the two names. Have you found birth records for these children and obtained the certificates which might give a clue to parentage, or at least a mother? In response to: Not so simple in this case as these are three young siblings, each listed in the workhouse census return as Smith (alias Barker). As Smiths they could be my ancestors. Now I have found three children same first names, dob, surname Barker, in the census 10 years before. I wonder if the Barker children were adopted in the workhouse by the Smiths and then left to live with them, taking their name. Do you know if workhouse managements arranged for child name changes? In response to: What is anyone's 'real' name? People of course do change their names from time to time and I suspect the workhouse population were a strata of society where it happened quite often, in that it might be convenient to be called one name in one place and something else in another and sometimes to say that one was now known as Jones but had been known as Smith. Perhaps to escape the law, pretend one was someone else etc 'John Jones otherwise known as Smith' Your real name is what you are called, not what is down on a piece of paper. In response to: I've found several census records for a workhouse where the inmates are named as, for example, Bessie Smith (alias Barker). Does anybody know what this means? Why two names? Is Smith or Barker the real name?
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