The letters have very few references to births, and those that do exist mostly relate to illegitimacies or conceptions outside marriage.  We learn of Thomas and Mary, the servants, who have to leave their employer since a prospect for increase has occurred.  Then the terrible events surrounding Mrs Harris also concern an illegitimate child.  The poor widow, mother of six other children, has conceived again, but dies in appalling circumstances during its birth.  No father comes forward, although speculation is rife.  The Harris family kept a grocery for a while.  Early births happened also towards the top end of the social scale.  Eyebrows lifted at the appearance of a child to the new Mrs William Parsons, some three months after her wedding.

The parish records show five illegitimacies during this period, none of whom feature in the letters.  No early births occurred, defined as the appearance of a first child within six months of a recorded marriage.  In fact, the illegitimacy rate in the villages at this time ran around the six percent level, early births closer to two percent.  According to the parish records, illegitimacy in the villages had reached almost nine percent of baptisms during the Napoleonic War period.  It would climb almost to this level between 1851-1875.  The period covered by the letters, therefore, forms a valley between these two peaks.  The recorded incidence of illegitimacy largely occurs in the agricultural working families.  Since the letters do not make much mention of this class as a whole, we might not expect to find much coverage of these illegitimacies.  True to form, most of the five illegitimacies reported at this time belong to that social level.  Two of the three mentions of illegitimacy and early births actually relate to people lying further up the pyramid.  Mr Blackman, suspected as fathering the child that killed Mrs Harris, was a farmer, and may even have had some linkage with the Slade family.  Mrs William Parsons belonged to the upper half of that widespread family.  Therefore, they make their appearance in the letters because they constitute notable or exceptional circumstances.