Phineas Hudson, Chancellor
of York, as having died in her thirty-ninth year of her
twenty-fourth child; another of Mrs. Joseph Cooper, as dying of
her twenty-sixth child, and, lastly, of Mrs. William Greenhill,
of a village in Hertford, England, who gave birth to 39 children
during her life. Brand, a writer of great repute, in his "History
of Newcastle," quoted by Walford, mentions as a well attested
fact the wife of a Scotch weaver who bore 62 children by one
husband, all of whom lived to be baptized.
A curious epitaph is to be seen at Conway, Carnarvonshire--
"Here lieth the body of Nicholas Hookes, of Conway, gentleman,
who was one-and-fortieth child of his father, William Hookes,
Esq., by Alice, his wife, and the father of 27 children. He died
20th of March, 1637."
On November 21, 1768, Mrs. Shury, the wife of a cooper, in Vine
Street, Westminster, was delivered of 2 boys, making 26 by the
same husband. She had previously been confined with twins during
the year.
It would be the task of a mathematician to figure the
possibilities of paternity in a man of extra long life who had
married several prolific women during his prolonged period of
virility. A man by the name of Pearsons of Lexton, Nottingham, at
the time of the report had been married 4 times.
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