The little family that never was

Yawn. Here we go again. Newspaper reports on claims for child support conjure up in our minds the usual depressing story of a feckless young man neglecting his responsibilities towards a girl with foolishly romantic notions. But hold on: we must be guided by evidence, and not our received ideas. An individual case picked at random can reveal how ordinary families dealt with an illegitimate birth, and how it affected the life-chances of the parties immediately involved. The sheer absence of drama in a report on one particular case in 1914 prompted me to explore the circumstances, and I found that it opened a gateway to a sad little story of a family that never was.

In December 1914, Emily Ellen Roberts, 31, a single woman of Godington near Bicester, summoned Jack Langley before the magistrates, claiming maintenance for her illegitimate child. Farmer John Langley of Fenny Stratford, also 31, admitted paternity and was ordered to pay three shillings a week until the child was 16.¹  

Attempts to obfuscate the situation around an irregular birth can be almost touching in their transparency. An examination of Emily’s circumstances by means of the 1911 census, the nearest to the court case, reveals that, living with Emily and her parents, was 12 year-old Elsie Alice Roberts.² Her birthplace is given as Bletchley, not Godington, and she is described as a "visitor". But might the child actually have been Emily's illegitimate daughter, modestly concealed in plain sight in the record? Could Emily have any reason to be in the Bletchley area nine months before Elsie’s birth?

Included in the Bletchley area for registration purposes at the time of Elsie's birth was Fenny Stratford, the home of Emily’s brother, bricklayer Walter Roberts and his wife Alice, only a couple of years married and as yet childless. Were they expecting a child? Perhaps they sent word to Godington to seek Emily's help with an expected new-born baby which never made it to full-term.

Little Elsie's arrival in October 1898 suggests that Emily was indeed in Fenny Stratford at the beginning of that same year and encountered Jack, a baker's assistant from Leagrave in Bedfordshire. Jack’s uncle Frederick Langley was Fenny Stratford’s baker, so Jack appears to have been staying with relatives too.³ Emily and Jack were very young at the time of the birth – both around 15. Had they wished to marry, they could have done so; at common law and by canon law at the time a person who had attained the legal age of puberty could contract a valid marriage, and the legal age of puberty was 14 years for males and 12 years for females. Anyway, a couple already expecting a child could hardly be accused of failing to reach puberty. But in England and Wales, the Marriage Act of 1753 required parental consent for those under 21.⁴ No marriage transpired. And the inauguration in the year of Elsie’s birth of the Oxford and County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children with its network of diligent inspectors ready to follow up any tip-off regarding lax parental supervision may have persuaded Emily’s parents to keep the matter as private as possible. A daughter conceiving a child at 14 might be looked upon unfavourably.

So at baby Elsie's baptism, Emily’s brother Walter and his wife Alice are given as parents.⁶ Walter and Alice appear to have taken in Emily’s baby to allow Emily to go into service in Stratton Audley.⁷ But in the next few years the couple embarked on a family of their own, and by 1911 they had their hands full with five children in their tiny two-up, two-down cottage. So, as we have seen, Emily and Elsie moved back to live with Emily's parents in Godington.

The death in 1913 of Jack's widowed father, baker George Langley, appears to have liberated Jack from any further obligation to the baking trade and to Leagrave.⁸ He moved to Fenny Stratford, which is why he is referred to in the 1914 newspaper report as being from that village. He took up the tenancy on Yard End Farm, a 23-acre dairy holding near to Fenny Stratford station and to the Langley household.⁹ Now that he was a man of business, did Emily hope for a marriage proposal that did not materialise?

And yet, in 1914, Emily felt the need to approach the magistrates over the matter of maintenance. We recall that the court ordered Jack to pay three shillings a week for Elsie until she was 16 years old. Well, in 1914 she was 16 years old, so it looks as if Emily was trying to claim back-payment of funds that she was owed from previous years. Had she ever asked Jack for financial help before? If not, why not? With both the Roberts family and the Langley family having connections in Fenny Stratford, it would not have been difficult to stay in touch. Had Jack promised Emily that, as soon as he was in a position to provide her and Elsie with a home, they would be married – and then backed out when called upon to make good on his promise?

There is an alternative interpretation of the facts. We know that Jack did not deny being Elsie's father. Perhaps he had regularly visited his daughter throughout her childhood; we cannot say. But what did he do with his new-found liberty following his father’s death? Did he get as far away from his responsibilities as possible? No. He moved nearer to his daughter. Was he hoping to position himself as suitable husband material in order to encourage Emily into a reconciliation? Did Emily rouse Jack’s resentment by failing to rush immediately into his arms now that he was a man of business? It is not exactly unknown even today for financial matters to be used as a bludgeon in the event of disagreement between parents. Perhaps Jack, piqued by Emily’s refusal of an offer of marriage at last, declined to pay to Emily what he owed for his daughter. Maybe it was Emily who was the reluctant party when it came to marriage, and Jack succumbed to an urge to strike back. Hence the court case. We simply don't know, but it’s a possibility that cannot be discounted simply on the basis of our preconceptions.

The fathers in these cases mostly carried on with their lives more or less unaffected, marrying local girls and having families. But these were menacing times; in February 1917 Jack signed up with the Irish Guards and went to Flanders. In October 1917, after just three weeks at the Front, he was killed at Passchendaele.¹⁰ He was 34. Yard End Farm was never to be home to the little Langley family. Emily was described on Jack’s Army pension index card as his “unmarried wife”.¹¹  

Mothers of illegitimate children rarely seem to have come away with their life-chances unaffected. Frequently they either failed to find a husband at all, or they waited until their contemporaries died off and mopped up the resulting widowers, often entering the household as housekeeper. Emily’s family was sufficiently financially comfortable for her to remain at home, keeping house for her widowed father.¹² There is a neat echo here of the pragmatism the Roberts family displayed years before in the case of Elsie’s early years; presumably for reasons of space, Elsie has been swapped in the Godington household for Walter’s daughter, six-year-old Ellen. Meanwhile Elsie served as housekeeper to her now-widowed uncle Walter¹³ until, aged 30, she married a 60-year-old house painter from Bethnal Green with a deceased wife and five children.¹⁴ Her mother Emily never married and died in Fringford near Bicester in 1944, aged 60.¹⁵

We cannot say what would have happened if Jack Langley had not been obliged to go off to war – though admittedly that was a full three years after his move to Fenny Stratford, so it seems likely that Emily and Jack would have continued as they were. But careful research reveals the Roberts family reacting in an admirably practical way, pooling the resources of the Godington and Fenny Stratford households, and introducing a touch of harmless fiction into the official record where necessary to preserve the Roberts ladies’ privacy and perhaps to guard against snooping authorities.

1  Oxford Times, 26 December 1914.

2  1911 England Census, Caversfield and Godington, Oxfordshire.

3  1901 England Census, Fenny Stratford, Bucks.

4  https://statutes.org.uk/site/the-statutes/eighteenth-century/1753-26-geo-2-c-33-prevention-of-clandestine-marriages/

5  Oxford Review, 18 February 1898.

6  Ancestry.com, England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975, FHL Film Number 1967111, 30 Oct 1898, Elsie Alice Roberts.

7  1901 England Census, Stratton Audley, Oxfordshire.

8  England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915, Newport Pagnell, Bucks, Mar 1913, vol 3a, p 1211, George Langley.

9  https://www.mkheritage.org.uk/archive/jt/bletchley/docs/heroes.html, Bletchley during the First World War, a town fit for heroes by John Taylor.

10  Ancestry.com, Ireland, World War I Casualties, 1914-1922, Volume: 5 (Ker To M’gil), John Langley, 9 Oct 1917, p56.

11  UK, World War I Pension Ledgers and Index Cards, 1914-1923

12  1921 England Census, Godington, Oxfordshire.

13  1921 England Census, Shenley, Bletchley. Even at this date, Elsie is still listed in the census as Walter’s daughter, not his niece.

14  London Metropolitan Archives; London, England, UK; London Church of England Parish Registers, Bethnal Green, 28 Sept 1929.

15  Anglican Parish Registers; Reference Number: PAR114_ACC6120_3, Godington, Oxfordshire, 7 Feb 1944.