Give me the Child, on second thoughts just take it to the Workhouse.

I have been reading Brian Elks novelised biography of his grandfather ,Jack Elks of the Kent Mineworkers association, 'Give me the Child'

Fascinating, miners wept at Jack Elks funeral, single minded hard working and capable official who fought for and united the mineworkers of Kent.

Bit of a bugger to his family. His daughter's lover approached him for permission to marry. He sent him packing. He's a soldier. (What will you do on the picket line) Sends him packing. I guess this is no surprise, Elks has seen many picket lines, maybe needs a little time. But the daughter is pregnant, he sends her and the baby to the workhouse, daughter runs away baby is lost in the system.

But I can't be judgemental -
because whilst looking for something else entirely this Spring I hit the inmate list of Faversham workhouse in 1881
see
Arthur Higgins . pauper .male. I year old. born Faversham
This child would have been born in 1880, Emily's parents having been married in late 1880.

Emily higgins. my grandmother of Ackholt farm, had a number of brothers and sisters, for one we have no birth details, but a name,Arthur Rodney. And I was thinking is this baby Great Uncle Arthur, born too early(before the wedding and consequently abandonned temporarily or for good?
But more was to come. Last month my cousin sent me this birth record-

Name:	Leslie Stuart H Clark
Year of Registration:	1904
Quarter of Registration:	Apr-May-Jun
District:	Thanet
County:	Kent
Volume:	2a
Page:	1036

Leslie Stuart Hamilton Clark was my Dad's name. My dad was born in February 1913. We know that the Higgins side of the family were very fond of the name Leslie Stuart Hamilton, there was a great uncle called Leslie Stuart Hamilton Higgins. We found some distantly related Higginses, who had gone on having Leslie Stuart Hamiltons up to the mid twentieth century, but they didnt know why there ancestors liked this name either- but is it possible that another Higgins likeing the name Leslie Suart Hamilton other then Emily married another Clark other then William? It must be an older brother older brother,( if a higgins couple liked a name they would use it several times until the baby lived) But the problem is that we've dated this wedding picture as 1904, it's clearly summer. Leslie Stuart Hamilton Clark the first was born in the Spring? Another premarital baby?

Even in the 1940s my widowed mother was under pressure from her Inlaws to put her son in the workhouse. It seems many people were not adverse to putting a baby in the workhouse-

I dont know if workhouse baby 1880, Arthur, was a relative. It seems very unlikely Leslie the first could be anything other then Leslie the second's brother. But did he die? or was he abandoned?


I'd been planning to write a bit more about Give me the Child, but got , quite unplanned, distracted with abandoned babies, so I'll post that later.