Hi Barbara As I am away from home working at the moment I cannot rely on any of my normal reference books to support my statement. However a quick Google turned up this: http://kamsbrain.com/Papers/williamharvey.pdf A Seventeenth-Century Stew: Midwives, Infant Baptism, and William Harvey by Kimberly McWorter Published in "The Cornerstone Historical Journal", no. 25 June 2004 Department of History, University of California Riverside I thought this warranted a wider audience so have copied this to the List. A Happy New Year! Polly ----- Original Message ----- From: "Barbara Walker" <msbwalker@tiscali.co.uk> To: "Polly Rubery" <polly@rowberry.org> Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2008 9:33 AM Subject: Re: [OEL] re Nunc child Hi Polly I have been enjoying this thread over the past few days but was surprised to hear that all midwives were licenced by the church and could baptise in the 1620s. I had assumed that midwifery might have been a little more anarchic than that, especially in the countryside. Many thanks Barbara W ----- Original Message ----- From: "Polly Rubery" <polly@rowberry.org> To: "A Lee" <alee231@btinternet.com>; "Barbara Youds" <barbara.youds@ntlworld.com>; <eve@varneys.org.uk>; "OLD-ENGLISH@rootsweb. com" <OLD-ENGLISH@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2008 6:14 AM Subject: Re: [OEL] re Nunc child > Hi Audrey > > No a child can be baptised by anyone, and midwives were licenced by the > church for this very reason. > So the fact that no name is given indicates that the child was never > baptised, even by a midwife. > Polly > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "A Lee" <alee231@btinternet.com> > To: "Barbara Youds" <barbara.youds@ntlworld.com>; <eve@varneys.org.uk>; > "OLD-ENGLISH@rootsweb. com" > <OLD-ENGLISH@rootsweb.com> > Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 9:36 PM > Subject: Re: [OEL] re Nunc child > > > Could these babies have been born very sickly and baptized by the midwife? > This would mean that the midwife was "unqualified" to perform baptisisms > as > such but had, nevertheless, performed a baptism of sorts. I believe that > it > was the practice of midwives to do this where a child was born on the > point > of death. This could cover the nuncupative meaning. > > Audrey > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Barbara Youds" <barbara.youds@ntlworld.com> > To: <eve@varneys.org.uk>; "OLD-ENGLISH@rootsweb. com" > <OLD-ENGLISH@rootsweb.com> > Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 1:51 PM > Subject: Re: [OEL] re Nunc child > > >> Well spotted Eve! I have that booklet, and also others of more recent >> origin. It seems the jury is still out on the exact cause and while I am >> not >> enough of an expert to suggest that I might lay the debate to rest I am >> hoping to gain some insight from this particular PR, which as you have >> also >> guessed is in Lancashire, Ashton under Lyne to be precise. >> >> As far as nunc: child goes I do think, as I work through the register and >> find more examples, that these are unbaptised children and not >> necessarily >> illegitimate - I have just found a nunc: child and a wife of an >> individual >> buried in one coffin. This is the entry for the incumbent, Henry Fairfax, >> in >> VCH: >> He was a younger son of Sir Thomas Lord Fairfax, and was fellow of >> Trinity >> College, Cambridge; inherited Oglethorpe, near Tadcaster, where he >> died..... >> His eldest son Henry, born at Ashton, became the fourth Lord Fairfax; a >> younger son, Brian, was an author. >> >> So perhaps not the half educated curate I imagined at first. >> >> Thank you to everyone for this - you have all helped confirm my idea of >> what >> these children were, even if there are still puzzling aspects to his use >> of >> the word. I will be sure to acknowledge you all!(Though, if my tutors are >> familiar with the term I could write almost anything I wished I think :-) >> >> Barbara Y >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: eve@varneys.org.uk [mailto:eve@varneys.org.uk] >> Sent: 30 December 2008 13:06 >> To: Barbara Youds >> Subject: Re: [OEL] re Nunc child >> >> > The reason I would like to know is that I am looking at a mortality >>> crisis and the term abortive is given for many burials indicating >>> possibly the effects of a famine and I need to be able to assign these >>> nunc entries to a particular category of burial in order to come up >>> with a set of stats to manipulate. >> >> Is this the mortality crisis of 1623, which Dr Colin Rogers studied as >> affecting a large number of Lancs parishes - way back in 1979 or so? >> He did publish a paper on it - but I dare say you are familiar with this. >> I recall he concluded it was famine related, since mothers are babies >> were malnourished and so died. >> No virus found in this incoming message. >> Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com >> Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.1/1868 - Release Date: >> 29/12/2008 >> 10:48 >> >> No virus found in this outgoing message. >> Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com >> Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.1/1868 - Release Date: >> 29/12/2008 >> 10:48 >> >> >> >> ==================================== >> WEB PAGE: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ >> ARCHIVES: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> OLD-ENGLISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >> quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com > Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.1/1869 - Release Date: > 30/12/2008 > 12:06 > > > > > > ==================================== > WEB PAGE: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ > ARCHIVES: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > OLD-ENGLISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word > 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the > message > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ==================================== > WEB PAGE: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ > ARCHIVES: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > OLD-ENGLISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message