Saturday, March 04, 2006

Bastardy

Bastardy and Baby Farming in Victorian England: "Illegitimacy had always been stigmatized in English Society. Since the 17th and the 18th centuries, the negative attitude toward bastards was evident in legislation which denied them assistance from the poor rates.

Justices were merely to see that the parents supported their child, not to enforce morality. Rates being administered in a more benevolent manner than intended, a rise in illegitimacy, and an increase in the number of forced marriages all collided with the Evangelical and Utilitarian philosophies of Victorian England; in 1834 the Poor Laws were reformed. Poverty and illegitimacy were moral issues which needed to be remedied, and the New Poor Law was designed to restore virtue and stimulate thrifty, industrious workers. The Bastardy Clause absolved the putative father of any responsibility for his bastard child and socially and economically victimized the mother in an effort to restore female morality. Its enactment fomented the growth of a modern and murderous form of an old institution, baby farming, which preyed on the infants of these humiliated and alienated mothers. Despite the tremendous toll it took on the lives of innocent children, the Victorians' fear of government intervention into social reform and the Victorian ideal of the inviolability of the family prevented its reform until the end of the 19th century. "
On February 15, 1865, the body of Mary Jane Harris' four-month-old son was found wrapped up in a copy of the Western Times beside a road in Torquay. Miss Harris had farmed out the child to Mrs. Winsor for 3s a week, and, at first, resisted Mrs. Winsor's offer to dispose of the child. When the burden of its support became too much she stood by and watched Charlotte Winsor smother her son and wrap his naked body in an old newspaper; the body was later dumped on the roadside.

Testimony revealed that Mrs. Winsor conducted a steady trade of boarding illegitimate infants for a few shillings a week or putting them away for a set fee of 3 to 5 pounds. <41>

The public pressure for reform, however, died down soon after Winsor was sent to prison. Dr. John Brendon Curgenven and Ernest Hart, along with a group of their associates in London's Harveian Society, remained outraged, however, and committed their organization to the fight for reform.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

handwriting help please

the words times four

click for larger image
from my email:-
Crosses on Left margin
No 1 - 3rd word in from the right is the village I am seeking translation of
No 2 - 4th word from right
No 3 - 2nd word from left, which I thought was Sodbury
No 4 - 2nd word from left
No 5 - 7th word from left

I have had an email suggesting word could be 'Berwick Glos' apparent;y near Compton Greenfield and Hallen in Glos. Henry has a house at Shirehampton which is quite close to there, but I dont have a detailed enough map to find Berwick?
Henry married at North Nibley, leaves money to the Charity School at Dyrham, the chapel in Shirehampton for extra services to be held, many many bequests and annuities, some in Bristol. He is described as Gentleman of City of Bristol. He also had a house on St Michaels Hill, Bristol.
He is leaving money all over the place, so hard to pin this mystery village down.
It is a huge will, 6 pages long, I have ploughed through as far as page four, slow going.My interest is through a nephew he mentions through Abraham Bodman COOK, which I am trying to confirm is my ancester.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Happy Birthday to Queen Elizabeth II

Celebrating The Queen's 80th Birthday > Homepage: "Welcome to the official web site for The Queen's 80th birthday celebrations in 2006."

A decade by decade look at The Queen's life

Much has happened over the course of The Queen's 80 years. Television has been invented, man has walked on the moon for the first time and the Berlin Wall has been built and then razed to the ground. Her Majesty's life has seen many changes too, from fulfilling her role as Queen at the age of 25, to raising a family, to world travel on a scale unparalleled by previous Monarchs.

ONE BIG FLASH MOVIE but what about alternate text?

Virtual Waterways Archive

Virtual Waterways Archive Catalogue


Sharpness to the Severn: Two Gloucestershire Waterways

This virtual exhibition focuses on two Gloucestershire waterways, the River Severn and the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, and shows some of the records held at Gloucestershire Record Office and at the British Waterways Archive at the National Waterways Museum in Gloucester Docks.

Virtual Waterways Archive Catalogue - Useful links

UpFront - the Online Newsletter of the National Genealogical Society of USA

NGS Events in 2006

7-10 June 2006
28th NGS Conference in the States
Hyatt Regency O'Hare,
Chicago, Illinois, USA

Chicagoland Genealogical Consortium are the hosts
and was formed on 27 July 2005 to act as the Local Arrangements Committee
NGS Chicago 2006 BLOG

NGS 2006 e-registration link

UpFront with NGS is a free, twice monthly genealogy newsletter by e-mail, designed for members of the National Genealogical Society and the entire genealogical community.

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

1861 to 1913. Crew lists

Crew List Index Project - Crew lists: "CLIP was set up to improve access to the records of British merchant seafarers of the late 19th century and has gathered the largest database of entries from crew lists.

This site gives information about merchant seafarers on British registered ships for the period 1861 to 1913. "

Monday, February 27, 2006

Tribal Pages

Family Tree - build your Family Tree website:

"It's Free. Build your Family Tree website online. Invite friends and family to view or update your site. Just signup for a free site, add names of your relatives and TribalPages will instantly create your family tree website. Check out a sample website "

Williams, Lewis and Allied families, Photos, Birthdays, Anniversaries

neat sitemap

many broken pots to replace?

Hamada: "was urged to return to Japan by Kawai following the Tokyo earthquake and left England just before Christmas via Paris and Cairo."

Bernard Leach web site

Google Page Creator

neat looking googlepages

getreal52 - Finding the Bugs in this Program

brownpau - BROWNPAU'S HOME ON THE ONLINE INTERNET WEB IS NOW OPEN FOR YOUR ENJOY!

search site:googlepages.com com
about 516 from googlepages.com was 472 yesterday


the chinese are in googleville too !

yesterday - chenqian's Home Page
Translated version of http://yesterday.googlepages.com/:
"Good, first moves the blog on writing has a look:
Takes borrows ??
and someone schoolmate everywhere randomly takes a stroll,
discovers the many place scenic spots the history all is take thousand years as the magnitude,
they give person's feeling like Xi'an the sky are equally heavy.

Walks receives the newly opened net on the road proclaims ??,
the above arranges in order the computer disposition,
all is take G as the magnitude,
memory frequently 1g, if sighs with emotion one

with the southern Min dialect, should like this say:

The now computer monster was more and more beastly."

Tracing An Ancestor's Service In The Great War

Western Front Association Contributed Articles
The National Archives, Kew
This contains records of both men and units, although many of the men's records were lost in the Blitz in September 1940 when an incendiary bomb destroyed the South London warehouse where they were stored.

The website, www.nationalarchives.gov.uk, contains indexes of the contents of each class of documents but in order to search the records themselves, either a personal visit to Kew, or the services of a researcher, will be required. Do not be discouraged from making a personal visit if you can: it is basically just a giant reference library and the staff are very helpful. On your first visit you will need some identification in order to obtain a reader's ticket, a process which is free and only takes a few minutes.
Soldiers' Personal Service RecordsThe soldiers' records now available at the National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office), Ruskin Avenue, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU on microfilm comprise two categories: the so-called "Unburnt Documents" and "Burnt Documents". The former are about 8 to 10% of the whole and relate principally to those men who were discharged with a pension during the course of the war, usually as a result of wounds. These documents were held by the Ministry of Pensions in 1940 and thus survived the Blitz. They have recently been released at Kew and are in class WO364.


The "Burnt Documents", amounting to perhaps 30% of the whole, are still held by the MoD at Hayes. They are charred, water-stained and jumbled, just as they were rescued by firemen in 1940. The project to microfilm them at Kew is now complete, the microfilms being in class WO363. The last batch of microfilms contains mis-sorted records. The actual documents will never become available to the public as they are far too fragile to handle. The remaining 60% or so of documents were irretrievably lost in the 1940 fire.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

new today

hugh watkins's page about his blogs &c: "testing google's new web pages ajax editor - using defaults - later this will be a links page"

counting down to Oscar Night

OSCAR.com - 78th Annual Academy Awards - Home Page

Sunday March 5 2 pm PT or 8 pm ET
and via
The World Clock - Time Zone Converter
UTC
Monday, 6 March 2006, 01:00 am
2:oo am in Denmark or Paris

Related time zone tools
The World Clock - current time around the world
The Meeting Planner - helps find suitable time for a call or meeting across time zones
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Index of all available time zone tools