In the English language there are five vowels: 

a – e – i – o – u

Lots of words begin with a vowel, but probably none more feared, in our not too distant past, than the word illegitimate.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines illegitimate as “born of parents not married to each other“.

In Australia, in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, illegitimate was a word that had serious connotations. It wasn’t enough to say you were married when registering the birth of a child, you seemingly had to provide a date for the said marriage. If there was no marriage date, it was likely that the child was labelled ‘illegitimate’. Birth certificates in New South Wales were stamped accordingly, and the father’s name either not recorded on the document, or in my great-aunt’s case in 1898, recorded, then noted to be removed. She was given the label ‘illegitimate‘.

One can only wonder at the shame felt by women who, for various reasons, had a child out of wedlock, a situation frowned upon by society at the time. My great-aunt’s birth was no exception.

My great-grandmother, born Annie Siddall, 1879, in Sheffield, Yorkshire, bore her first child in Sydney New South Wales at the age of twenty. The father’s name was recorded on the birth document, despite a note in the margin instructing that it be removed. Luckily it wasn’t. The label on that birth certificate confirmed the parent’s marital status: ‘illegitimate‘, or born out of wedlock, as it was commonly called.

Annie, as I remember, was a quiet, elegant woman who died when I was six years old. I remember the day clearly. I remember the stairs leading up to her room in the flat she lived in with her daughter and son-in-law in Leichhardt, on the western side of Sydney. I still have some of Annie’s things, passed down to me from my mother: a watch, a sandalwood fan, but most of all, memories of a beautiful great-grandmother.

Only now, as an adult in a seemingly enlightened world, can I appreciate what Annie went through. It wasn’t enough that her first child was born out of wedlock, but her second child narrowly escaped entering the world with the same label.

A few years ago while researching Annie’s life, I stumbled across a newspaper article dated 1900, the year before my grandmother was born. It seems Annie was trying to locate the father of her first-born daughter, the older sister of my yet to be conceived grandmother. In desperation Annie went to the police, who issued a warrant for Daniel’s arrest: the charge – desertion of an illegitimate child. A year later another article appeared in the same newspaper, stating that the warrant for Daniel’s arrest had been withdrawn because he was going to marry Annie.

When my grandmother was born in September 1901, her birth registration included the marriage date of her parents, and excluded the label illegitimate, if only by the grace of four months from the date of the marriage. Daniel’s name took it’s rightful place as father of the child on the formal document.

Twelve months later Daniel was on the run again. In 1902 he married another woman, in another country, only to return a few years later to the suburb where he and Annie had lived. Daniel relocated his second family in close proximity to the one he had abandoned in 1901. A DNA match with a granddaughter from Daniel’s second family confirms that Daniel was indeed the father of my grandmother, from his first family.

Daniel’s subsequent clashes with the law can be found in the pages of Sydney newspapers through the wider-reaching lens of the Internet, which gives us access to those newspapers more than a hundred years after they were printed.

We will probably never know when Annie changed the course of her life, and that of her two young daughters, but we know that she did.

In 1912, Annie added another daughter to her family. A chance comment by my mother in her declining years caused a ripple effect through Annie’s descendants. Nonchalantly, over afternoon tea, my mother regaled the story of my cousin’s mother, Annie’s youngest daughter, being passed over the back fence for Annie to raise. Adoption meant there was no blood relationship between Annie and her youngest daughter, and therefore between the descendants of the three daughters.

When you grow up loving the cousins you know so well, it would take more than an adoption to sever the ties of those relationships, and so it is with my family. The children of Annie’s youngest daughter are just as much the cousins of the children of her first two daughters as they ever were, regardless of the lack of DNA or blood-connection.

Documents pertaining to children in care in New South Wales were recently digitised and released, and part of the adoption story emerged. Annie legally adopted her youngest daughter when the baby was nine months old. The records state the child’s birth-mother’s name, but no father was registered. The words ‘Deserted’, and ‘Illegitimate’ were recorded on what would become a vital document in the life story of an adopted daughter.

But there was another noteworthy piece of information on that baby’s adoption document. Annie’s and Daniel’s surnames did not match, nor did Annie use her maiden name. Instead, Annie’s surname was the same as Charles’ surname – the man the family had believed was Annie’s husband and the father of her three daughters. Research had already established, and proven, Annie’s marriage to Daniel and the paternity of their first two daughters, and the adoption of the third daughter, but when did Annie marry Charles?

No record has been found of a marriage between Annie and Charles. When Annie died in 1956 my grandfather, husband of Annie’s middle daughter, recorded the missing details on her death certificate. Annie’s surname was recorded as the same as Daniels, but also included that she was ‘also known as‘ Mrs … (the surname of Charles). The forethought of my grandfather to record the details accurately, illuminated the path going forward for descendants to see the whole picture of Annie’s life, albeit, missing details of when she co-habited with Charles, and why she didn’t marry him. Did Annie consider herself still married to Daniel, despite his subsequent marriage overseas? Did she always love the rebel Daniel? Sadly, we will never know, as those who may have held the knowledge have long since passed.

Does it matter that Annie and Charles didn’t marry? In the twenty-first century, while marriage is still popular, there are many who choose to have children and not marry until later, if at all.

Although too late for Annie and the women of her era, the boundaries of righteousness that dictated the order in which a woman should marry and conceive, have been stretched, and indeed removed. Men, in the old equation, were only held responsible for the financial support of the children they spawned, not their part in fathering an illegitimate child. The father’s name was not recorded on the birth registration if he had not married the mother prior to the child’s birth. Fathers were seemingly spared the shame and scorn that prevailed at the time; shame and scorn were reserved for the woman and child.

That previously feared word, illegitimate, no longer has the impact on a child’s life, or that of the child’s mother, that it did in our great-grandparents era. In Australia, broadly speaking, the expectation to marry before having children, or at all, is no longer valid (with the exception of some sub-cultures based on cultural or religious beliefs). The law in Australia has changed to extend the same legal rights to de facto relationships as married couples, allowing more moral freedom for all, especially women¹.

And the word, illegitimate, has no place in our society now, nor should it ever have had².

¹ The view that the changes in law that allow more moral freedom for all, especially women, is the personal opinion of the author

² The personal opinion of the author

Note: if you have any questions regarding the life of my great-grandmother, Annie Siddall, please contact me through this site, and I will respond.

Anecdotal Note: ***Information gleaned from the marriage certificate of Annie and Daniel suggests they were married at the World Matrimonial Association at 471 Pitt Street Sydney, not necessarily the Church of Latter Day Saints as implied on the certificate. The building housed a marriage business run by Theophilus Carulus. The following newspaper report from 1903 paints Mr Carulus as a somewhat less than favourable character. Annie’s marriage certificate was signed by Edith Carulus as a witness to the marriage.

Article identifier http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article167903293 Page identifier http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page16124005 APA citationTHEOPHILUS IN TROUBLE. (1903, June 7). Truth (Sydney, NSW : 1894 – 1954), p. 6. Retrieved September 12, 2025, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article167903293

A Google search of ‘471 Pitt Street Sydney’ resulted in the following document, which ultimately unearthed the above document.