[BITList] Telegraph article - inbreeding, etc

[HUGH]

Malcolm,

Whoever told your brother that tale was talking through his you know what.  Statutory registration of births, marriages and deaths started as early as 1835 (England) and 1855 (Scotland) - my father's grandfather died in 1916, and there's plenty on him, all that is, apart from why he fell into the harbour and drowned.  Pre-1855 in Scotland births themselves weren't registered, but baptisms/christenings mostly were, in church registers, and the birth was often recorded alongside. Family bibles were sometimes the only record - the births of my 2xgreat grandmother and her sister were recorded in a Paisley church register, but the only record of their brother's birth is in the family bible which went to Canada with the brother. The late 1854 church baptismal registers in Paisley are full of mass entries of whole families, the parents evidently being under the impression some penalty might be imposed on the stroke of 1855 if the names weren't in the book. My own 2xgreat grandparents recorded all but those who had died as infants - they were also in the family bible (in my possession). Marriages were much the same - bookings, banns/proclamations and marriages were recorded in church registers - but the relatively common use of of "irregular"marriages in Scotland at that time meant a good many unions have to be inferred.  In such (legal) marriages, the couple marry each other in front of witnesses (as in modern registry offfice marriages) and there may or may not be a subsequent "blessing" in a church - what there isn't is a record of the event.  So wealth had nothing to do with it, and I'm surprised there were any problems encountered in tracing your ancestors in Scotland.

Hugh.

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