‘Revolting to Humanity’: oversights, limitations, and complications of the English Legitimacy Act of 1926

Abstract

This article analyses three areas that limited the effectiveness of the English Legitimacy Act of 1926. First, re‐registration was public, expensive, and time‐consuming. Second, the Treasury Office used the change in the law of intestacy to refuse more distant relatives’ claims on estates. Third, the law separated legitimacy from nationality, thus denying citizenship to legitimated children born abroad of British fathers and foreign mothers. In short, both because of parliamentary oversights and civil servants’ narrow interpretations of the law, relatively few children took advantage of the Act, and the minority who did, rather than being ‘illegitimate’ or ‘legitimate’, were a third category, the ‘legitimated’.

Notes

[1] For the view of the NCUMC, see Lettice Fisher, ‘The Legitimacy Bill’, The Times (8 December 1926), p. 12.

[2] Gail Savage (1996) The Social Construction of Expertise (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press); Susan Pedersen (1993) Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Rodney Lowe (1984) Bureaucracy Triumphant or Denied? The Expansion of the British Civil Service, 1919–1939, Public Administration, 62(3), pp. 291–310; Max Beloff (1975) The Whitehall Factor: the role of the higher civil service, 1919–39, in Gillian Peele & Chris Cook (Eds) The Politics of Reappraisal, 1918–1939 (New York: St Martin’s Press), pp. 209–231, especially pp. 219–223.

[3] National Archives, Lord Chancellor’s Office, LCO 2/752, S. P. Vivian to C. Schuster, 18 March 1925; House of Lords Debates 60 (12 March 1925), pp. 523–525; (26 March 1925), pp. 746–758; 63 (27 April 1926), pp. 936–942, 948–950; see also Home Office Records, HO 45/405558/171/128.

[4] LCO 2/753; first letter 7 April 1925, Vivian to Schuster; second 27 April 1926, DeVeale to Schuster, forwarding Vivian’s response to Midleton’s amendment; third 28 April 1926, Vivian to Schuster; HO 45/405558/171/128, History of the Legitimacy Bills since 1920.

[5] Diana Petre (1975) The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley (New York: George Braziller), p. 63; The Times (22 February 1928), p. 5; Jenny Bourne Taylor (2007) Bastardy and Nationality: the curious case of William Shedden and the 1858 Legitimacy Declaration Act, Cultural and Social History, 4(2), pp. 171–192; Gail Savage (1998) Erotic Stories and Public Decency: newspaper reports of divorce proceedings in England, The Historical Journal, 41(2), pp. 511–528.

[6] HO45/17970/503655/18, clipping from Daily Mail, 24 February 1928.

[7] HO 45/17970/503655/18, clipping from Daily Express, 22 February 1928; clipping from Daily Mail, 22 February 1928.

[8] For examples of The Times using more discretion, see 21 July 1927, p. 5, and 5 August 1927, p. 12; for the Daily Herald, see HO 45/17970/503655/19, 9 March 1928.

[9] National Archives, Registrar‐General Papers, RG 48/54, Application form and memorandum, 3 January 1927.

[10] RG 48/330, 15 October 1927, Application number 5611.

[11] Ibid., Correspondence from 3 January 1928 to 24 February 1928.

[12] RG 48/54, Memorandum on Legitimation Act, 3 January 1927.

[13] LCO 2/752, 28 April 1926, Vivian to Schuster.

[14] HO 45/405558/40, M. Headlam to Sir Malcolm Delevingne, 22 August 1922; Maxwell to Headlam, 29 August 1922; Headlam to Maxwell, 31 August 1922; HO 45/405558/80, Herbert Brittain to A. Maxwell, 20 March 1923.

[15] National Archives, Treasury Papers, T/162/428.E.18916, Treasury Escheat, A. D. Brown to Treasury Secretary, 3 May 1928.

[16] T/162/428.E.18916, Treasury Secretary Report, 30 July 1931; Lord Commissioner’s Response to Treasury Secretary’s Report, 31 August 1931.

[17] LCO 2/3590, G. E. P. Thorneycroft to Rt. Hon. Sir Frank Soskice, Law Officer’s Department, 16 September 1947; H. B. R. to M. E. D. Reed, Memorandum, 25 September 1947.

[18] Ibid., Memorandum L. L. R. to Mr. Rae, 26 May 1928. See also John R. Greenaway (1983) Warren Fisher and the Transformation of the British Treasury, 1919–1939,Journal of British Studies, 23(1), pp. 125–142; and G. C. Peden (1984) The ‘Treasury View’ on Public Works and Employment in the Interwar Period, Economic History Review, 37(2), pp. 167–181.

[19] Taylor, ‘Bastardy and Nationality’, pp. 176–177; M. Page Baldwin (2001) Subject to Empire: married women and the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act, Journal of British Studies, 40(4), pp. 525–526; Anon. (1915) An Act to Consolidate and Amend the Enactments Relating to British Nationality and the Status of Aliens, American Journal of International Law, 9(4), pp. 413–423.

[20] HO 45/405558/16, Letter from H. C. Blackmore to Home Secretary, 12 April 1922; HO 45/405558/26, comments on draft of Legitimacy bill, July 1922; House of Commons Parliamentary Debates 160 (1923), p. 2430; HO 45/405558/82, W. C. Bridgeman to D. White, 11 May 1923; HO 45/15127/5156117/496343/1‐3, Letters and memorandum from 7 June 1926 to 23 March 1927. For Shedden v. Patrick, see Taylor, ‘Bastardy and Nationality’.

[21] Baldwin, ‘Subject to Empire’, pp. 526–528.

[22] National Archives, Foreign Office Papers, FO 141/692/4, File #548, Affidavit of Alexander Frederick English, 3 March 1931; Foreign Office to Heathcote Smith, 31 March 1931; FO 141/563/3; File #462 (1934), Secretary to Arthur Yencken, Residency, Cairo, 5 April 1934; FO 496343/16, Wyndham Grech to High Commissioner, 27 November 1930.

[23] FO 496343/12, Reports from 17 October 1930, 6 November 1930, 25 November 1930.

[24] HO 45/15127/5156117/496343/38, report of judgement in Abraham, B. v. the Attorney General and Abraham, J. v. the Attorney General, August 1933.

[25] HO 45/15127/5156117/496343/6‐7, Correspondence, November–December 1927; see especially R. M. Greenwood to Gwyer (Treasury Solicitor’s Office), 6 December 1927. HO 45/15127/543651, Petition of Beatrice Minnie Gunther, 14 November 1929.

[26] Anon. (1928) Legitimacy Act, The Times, 13 April, p. 11.

[27] FO 493643/11, G. R. Warner to Foreign Office, 8 February 1928; G. R. Warner to Leeper, 20 February 1928.

[28] FO 493643/11, Chilston to Warner, 21 March 1928; Warner to Chilston, 10 April 1928; F. E. F. Adam to J. D. C. Wilton, 10 April 1928; Nicoletta Gullace (2002) ‘The Blood of our Sons’: men, women, and the renegotiation of British citizenship during the Great War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

[29] See HO 45/15127/5156117/496343/1, 3, 13, 19 for more examples; quote from FO141/692/4, memorandum from Secretary of State for Scotland Office to Foreign Office, 26 July 1934.

[30] See Laura Tibili (2005) Outsiders in the Land of their Birth: exogamy, citizenship, and identity in war and peace, Journal of British Studies, 44(4), pp. 796–815; and (2005) ‘Having Lived Close Beside Them All the Time’: negotiating national identities through personal networks, Journal of Social History, 39(2), pp. 369–387; Nicolette Gullace (2005) Friends, Aliens, and Enemies: fictive communities and the Lusitania riots of 1915, Journal of Social History, 39(2), pp. 345–367; and Sascha Auerbach (2007) Negotiating Nationalism: Jewish conscription and Russian repatriation in London’s East End, 1916–1918, Journal of British Studies, 46(3), pp. 594–620.

[31] HO 45/405558/82, S. Samuel to Col. Dalrymple White, M.P., no date (c.April 1923).

[32] House of Commons Parliamentary Debates 128 (1920), 2396.

[33] Beloff, ‘The Whitehall Factor’, p. 227.