Illegitimacy and illegitimates in English history

Abstract

'The bastard, like the prostitute, thief and beggar, belongs to that motley crowd of disreputable social types which society has generally resented, always endured. He is a living symbol of social irregularity. '(1) Thus commences one of the classic sociological analyses of the types of illegitimacy, and it immediately poses three problems for the anthropologist and the historian concerned with this topic in Britain. What was the rate of illegitimacy in our country before civil registration began? What was the attitude to those who bore and begat bastards? What was the attitude to the bastards themselves?

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