Perth.
Large Families (Vol. v., pp. 204. 304.).
—To the instances of unusually large numbers of children by one mother given in "N. & Q." may be added that of a Lady Elphinstone, who is said, by tradition, to have had no less than thirty-six children, of whom twenty-seven were living at one time.
There is a story told of this lady and her husband, Lord Elphinstone, which seems to corroborate the tradition; it is, that they once asked a new and somewhat bashful acquaintance to visit them, telling him that he should meet no one but their family circle. Their guest arrived shortly before dinner, and, being shown through the dining-hall on his way to the drawing-room, was much disconcerted at seeing a long table laid for about twenty people. On remonstrating with his host and hostess for having taken him in, as he thought, he was quietly informed that he had been told no more than the truth, for that their family party, when all assembled, only fell short of thirty by one.
I believe that John eighth Lord Elphinstone and his lady, a daughter of the Earl of Lauderdale, who lived in the latter part of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, are the pair to whom this story refers; and, though the Scotch peerages make no mention of any such phenomenon in the Elphinstone family, yet I am strongly inclined, from the goodness of the authority from which I derive the tradition, to believe it to be true; the more so, as it is now acknowledged that the Scotch peerages, not excepting Douglas's, which has hitherto been the chief book of reference respecting the noble families of Scotland, are so full of errors and omissions, that very little reliance can be placed on them.
Can any of your readers inform me whether any documentary evidence exists that a lady Elphinstone had this extraordinary number of children?
C. E. D.
Twenty-seven Children, &c.
—About fifty years ago, Mrs. Edwards, residing in Quickset Row, New Road, had her twenty-eighth child, each a single birth; they were all born alive, and all lived several months, but she never had more than ten living at a time.
A former pupil of mine knew a lady, of whom he wrote to me, that she had borne thirty children, all single births; seven only of them arrived at the age of manhood. He says, "This statement may be relied upon with the utmost confidence as a fact."