In today’s between-marking interludes, doing a case-search for something I am writing on ‘bastardy’. This keeps turning up 19th C cases with Bastard as a surname (Polden v Bastard; Nicolls v. Bastard…). Would have thought that would be a pretty mortifying surname in the days of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, with all of their illegitimacy-related plots, and all of the very real legal implications and social stigma of ‘bastardy’. Seems odd that it was not jettisoned. (Is it still with us? Can’t say I have ever been introduced to a Mr Bastard, Ms Bastard or Professor Bastard).
(Top prize for the most Blackaddery sounding ones, though, must go to some earlier examples – so we have Bastard, Administrator of Bastard, who was Executor of Bastard v [disappointingly not Bastard, but] Jutsham 94 E.R. 996 1 Jan 1738 Barnes 444 | [1738], and the simple but classic Bastard v. Bastard 89 ER 807| (1690) 2 Show. K.B. 81.)
GS
6/5/2021
Image: Wikimedia Commons.
(PS Fans of the author, Mr Collins, ought to have an information site about him called Wilkiepedia, oughtn’t they? Maybe they do.)