The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.1 | June 2023

Local Group Programmes

(March) Members’ Evening Sue Stannard gave us a resume of the project to introduce support into local libraries that will assist people with Family History research. Fareham has already started this project and Locks Wood library is due to start soon. Sue has visited Gosport Discovery Centre. They would like to provide this facility too, but she will need some volunteers to help once per month. She asked for volunteers’ names to be passed to her. A member then gave a short presentation about his ancestor who was in the Canadian military, but who came to England shortly before the war and married an English girl. However, he was unable to find any information about the marriage on the GRO index, despite having family wedding photos. The 1939 register proved useful in solving the mystery as he found the wife, using her maiden name, which then gave her married name and an annotation about the date of marriage, but not the location of the marriage. Using the wedding photos and an assumption that the marriage would have been held local to the wife’s family home, he deduced the location and contacted the church who were able to provide a copy of the marriage certificate - success! Other members spoke about the anomalies they had found when using the 1939 register. Many of the errors were transcription errors, but others were a complete mystery. Another member spoke about his ancestor who ran a boarding house in Brighton for actors and he had been able to find information about some of the actors staying there who were recorded on the 1939 register. He discovered that one of them had gone to Hollywood and some of the films in which he had appeared. Following report by Elayne Kenway (April) Condoms, Sponges and Syringes – the 19th Century radical pioneers of family planning – Bob Forder, Starting with the earliest pioneers of birth control and family planning, Bob told us all about the progress, implementation and effects on social and economic conditions from 1800 onwards. From the Rev Thomas’s “Malmo” - An essay on population. (Through Maltose, an Anglican minister who called for moral restraint and delayed marriage). In 1822 the case for contraception in the diabolical handbills caused a lot of controversy. Printed in Frances Place, London in 1843 and promoting the use of sponges, it was deemed indecent and blasphemous, and the cause of youth pregnancies and prostitution. Throughout the 19th Century contraception advice was targeted at women and always subject to protest and political manipulation. For info the following methods of contraception were some that were suggested at various times : • Irrigator • Lamberts Contraceptive devices. • Coughing by female after connection • Rhythm method (not failsafe) • Withdrawal by male (thought to damage • Sounds • French Letter or Glove. • Single pessary. • Diaphragm • Arsenic to reduce male vigor.

the nervous system) • Irrigation. Applied

• Dutch cap rubber. • Quinine spermicide.

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