A introduction to A Baptist Church in Eccles, Lancashire, 1831-1842

One might ask, what the “naming” actually involved, and why it was done. Since by definition Baptists do not perform infant baptism, whereas almost all other churches do, an obvious answer would be that the church, and the parents in particular, felt the need of some rite of passage to correspond with the “christening” which other people enjoyed. But other explanations might be considered as well. Before the days of civil registration, a baptismal record filled the role of a modern birth certificate: it was proof of identity, and of residence, and was indeed required as a condition of admission to the workhouse when necessary. It is said that some Baptists actually did conform to extent of having children christened in the Church of England for the sake of the record.^[52] It was also of course considered to be one of the many scandalous disabilities imposed by the Establishment. Among the surviving written registers of baptisms (or namings), of marriages and of burials in nonconformist churches, there is a considerable concentration in a short period of time prior to 1837, when many of them cease and civil registration takes over.^[53] Was there a movement to improve record-keeping in the nonconformist churches in order to negotiate a more favourable settlement in 1837?

A faint suggestion that the ceremony had some religious significance, if only for the minister himself, is that on the first occasion when it was done in the Chapel, it was recorded in rather florid terms as having taken place “before the congregation assembling in the Baptist Chapel…” (it was the naming of the Giles’ own son). It may or may not be significant that later it seems to have been done in the vestry. (It should perhaps be explained that in a church or chapel, the vestry is a small room, which may double as an office but is also used by the minister and deacons in preparation for a service).

The dates of the namings were mostly stated in the Register.^[54] The distribution of days of the week is very uneven: Sunday 10, Monday 1, Tuesday 4, Wednesday 2, Thursday 1, Friday and Saturday none. Sunday suggests an actual part of the Sunday service. The Sundays include four of the five occasions when the chapel is mentioned as the venue (three of them being the namings of the minister's own children). The only time when the chapel is mentioned and it is not a Sunday is the very last naming in the register, Wednesday 30th May 1837. The frequency of Tuesday would be explained if that was a regular day for an weekday evening service. In short there is no real reason to doubt that the ceremony was always held at the chapel, once a building was available. It is noticeable that on the Sundays there are more men witnesses than women (26 to 18), whereas on weekdays the reverse is true (20 to 34) - not surprisingly when working hours were so long.

The time lapse from birth to naming varies a great deal, but can be quite long: generally from four weeks to three months, averaging about 9 weeks.^[55] (Altogether exceptional is the child of the Cookson family, who may have been as old as eight years).^[56] It does not look as though any rule or custom was involved; certainly there are none of the very short intervals that appear in records of churches which practice infant baptism, where a child might be baptised very quickly if it was not expected to live. We might speculate that if anything the reverse applied, and that naming tended to be delayed until it was clear that the child was healthy. This might be inferred from the intervals between successive namings, in the families with two or three children. They range from 12 to 32 months, with an average of just two years. It seems likely that a number of babies died without being recorded. In fact we know of one, as the minister himself had a son, born apparently in May or June 1831, who died in December of the same year,^[57] but does not appear in the Register.

In six of the records there are "witnesses" to the birth in addition to the naming of a child. As already mentioned, three of these refer to the Giles’ own children, and the witnesses include a surgeon and a nurse. In the other three the names are evidently of local women who acted as midwives. In the first two, Crompton [20] and Lomax [21] it is one person, Elizabeth Jackson, who also seems to be a member of the congregation as she witnesses the namings as well; in the last case, the Barrow twins, there were two midwives, Anne Lowe and Isabella Wilcocks, Anne Lowe at least also being a member of the congregation [7]. Why the birth "witnesses" are mentioned only in these cases is not obvious.

[52] G. R. Breed (1995), 5.

[53] Horrocks (1972); other references.

[54] Three [7, 8, 9] were omitted - evidently by mistake, being all on one page - and in one other place [17] the text breaks off unfinished.

[55] One exception is 8 months.

[56] In the record of naming of Eliza, daughter of John and Martha Cookson (27 March 1837) the date of birth was left blank, as if to be entered later, but not entered. From other evidence (census, burial records) it appears that Eliza must have been about 8 years old. The family had three more children, Jonathan, Samuel and Hannah, who were about 10, 7, and 3 on census day (6 June 1841) so it would seem that Jonathan and Samuel at least were alive when Eliza was named, and Samuel may have been born before the Baptist Chapel register was closed. It is hard to guess the reason for this – did the family have a religious objection even to church naming of infants? Did they associate with the Baptists for only a brief period, then decide to have their other children named or christened elsewhere?

[57] George Street MI, Item 27. “Sacred to the memory of the infant son of William and Harriott Giles who died December 26^th 1831 aged 7 months”.