This post launches Citizen Erased, a 10-part series uncovering how genealogy, identity, and power intersected in the parish registers of Lichfield. Were the many Actons in the records a single family—or something more bureaucratic? This investigation explores how names became tools of social control under the English Poor Laws.

The Acton name appears over fifty times in the Lichfield parish registers between 1600 and 1800. But what if most of them weren’t real people, or at least not in the way we think of family trees and bloodlines? In this opening chapter of Citizen Erased, we begin by asking the unthinkable: What if the Actons weren’t a family, but an administrative artifact—paper people made to serve a growing system of social control?

The Paper People of Lichfield

How Parish Records Reveal an Engineered Class of the Managed Poor

In the heart of Staffordshire lies Lichfield, a cathedral city whose quiet lanes and medieval spires once housed a far more bureaucratically charged engine — one of names, births, and classifications. If you’ve ever stumbled through your own genealogy, you might recognize the sharp switch from heritage to data. That’s what happened with the Actons of Lichfield.

From the 1600s onward, something peculiar happened in this parish. Generations of children bearing the same surname appeared in quick succession, often born in or near the workhouse, often without clear parental links, and sometimes disappearing without trace.

This post explores the Lichfield Actons not just as a family but as an administrative artifact. We begin the journey here — with records, systems, incentives, and a broader commentary on how people became managed, tracked, and repurposed as population assets.

A Family That Multiplied — Or a Name That Was Assigned?

The first question that cracked open this inquiry:
How did the Acton name appear in so many records, in such short generational gaps, with such inconsistent parental data?

We found over 50 entries between 1600–1800 for ACTON, ASTON, ACTIN, ASTIN, and other variants — baptisms, burials, and marriages all from Lichfield parishes such as St. Chad, St. Mary, and the Cathedral.

A closer look shows:

• Rapid succession of births (e.g., Rosamond, Thomas, Richard Acton all within 1770–1775)
• Uncertain parentage for many children
• Multiple marriages and baptisms recorded without consistent cross-reference
• Repeated use of “Acton” across different poor relief documents and workhouse records

This pattern aligns less with the behavior of one family and more with a bureaucratic convention.

The Role of Parish Recordkeeping

Lichfield’s parish records were not simply family logs. They were instruments of population management, particularly after the implementation of the Poor Law Acts, which tasked parishes with tracking:

• Legitimate vs. illegitimate births
• The “settlement” or residency status of individuals
• Bastardy bonds and financial liability
• Orphaned children, pauper apprentices, and those placed in almshouses or workhouses

The Acton name may have become a default assignment — a “known poor family” or “catchment identity” for children whose mothers were unwed, untraceable, or dead.

Workhouses and the Surplus Child Economy

By the mid-1700s, the Lichfield Union Workhouse and associated poor relief systems became not just shelters but economic engines. Children were fed, clothed, minimally educated — and then sent out:

• As domestic servants
• As agricultural hands
• As factory or foundry labor (increasingly from age 7 or 8)
• Occasionally apprenticed to tradesmen

These children, especially orphans and illegitimates, were recorded under the local family names most often associated with the poor.

The Actons appear over and over again.

But a closer inspection shows no clear biological tree from Humphrey Acton (b. 1570) to John Acton (b. 1659) to Thomas Acton (b. 1733).
Instead, we see a pattern: births without fathers, marriages without prior lineage, and deaths recorded in bulk across famine, disease, and institutional collapse.

Bastardy Bonds, Settlement Certificates, and the Paper Family

To administer the Poor Laws, parishes used an arsenal of documents:

• Bastardy Bonds – where a man could be forced to pay for the upkeep of an illegitimate child (or a placeholder name like “Acton” would be used)
• Removal Orders – moving people to the parish of their legal settlement
• Apprenticeship Indentures – legal contracts for using children in labor
• Parish Registers – the public face of all of this

Thus, the paper family emerged: names recycled for expedience. A child born to no one became a “John Acton.” A widow died as “Elizabeth Acton,” even if unrelated. The appearance of continuity was crafted by necessity.

Who Profited?

Behind this system was not just charity, but a chain of economic beneficiaries:

• Landowners and vestrymen – who profited from child labor arrangements
• Parish overseers – who allocated funds and collected fines
• Institutions like the Lichfield Cathedral – who held land, wealth, and political influence
• Workhouse contractors and vendors – who fed and clothed inmates on government stipends
• The Crown – whose legal system and Poor Law institutions extended control through documentation

This wasn’t simply survival. It was throughput. A designed system of population control and economic extraction.

Does This Invalidate Genealogy?

Not entirely. But it changes the question.

Instead of “Who are my ancestors?” the Lichfield Actons teach us to ask:

• “What system assigned this identity?”
• “Who decided who I was?”
• “Was this name inherited — or assigned?”

For some families, this recontextualizes genealogy as the history of social management, not just biology. It can feel destabilizing. But it can also be liberating.

References

• Higgs, Edward. The Information State in England: The Central Collection of Information on Citizens since 1500. Palgrave, 2004.
• King, Steven. Poverty and Welfare in England 1700–1850. Manchester University Press, 2000.
• Goose, Nigel. “Workhouse Populations in the 1851 Census.” Local Population Studies, No. 62, 1999.
• Higginbotham, Peter. The Workhouse Encyclopedia
• FreeREG Parish Records, Lichfield Transcripts, 1600–1800

Coming Next in the Series

Title: “Assigned by Acton: The Name as a Brand in the Poor Law Era”
We’ll go deeper into how the name “Acton” may have functioned as a branding mechanism for pauper identity — and how modern data echoes similar patterns today.