What are Bastardly Orders,

[Zoemcdougall]

Hi, Some mentioned to about Bastardly Orders, apparently I'm told they are records for Children who are illegitimate, are these records availible to view on liine.

Zoe

[kiterunner]

It would be Bastardy Order rather than Bastardly. It is basically an order for the father of an illegitimate child to pay for his / her upkeep. I don't think many of them are online but some are indexed on A2A or on the indexes of various county record offices or archives.

Link to A2A: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/

Some counties have put their indexes on there and others haven't.

[kiterunner]

Here is an example of what you might find on A2A:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=047-qer_30-31&cid=1-1-39-2&kw=william clarkson bastardy#1-1-39-2

[Zoemcdougall]

Thankyou Kiterunner, Sorry for my spelling mistake, the reason I was asking about this is, is it worth me looking to see if my Great grandfather could be on those lists

[Olde Crone]

Not unless he was born before about 1840. Bastardy Orders then became Paternity or Maintenance Orders and were taken out by the mother herself (rather than by the parish overseer). Very few of these magistrate court records still exist because they were routinely destroyed when the child became 16.

Bastardy Orders were church/parish records and some survived because noone got around to destroying them.

OC

[Zoemcdougall]

Thankyou OC, he was b.1873.