Bastard
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a child begotten and born out of wedlock; an illegitimate child. By the civil and canon laws, and by the law of Scotland (as well as some States of the United States), a bastard becomes legitimate by the intermarriage of the parents at any future time. But, by the laws of England, a child, to be legitimate, must at least be born after the lawful marriage; it does not require that the child shall be begotten in wedlock, but it is indispensable that it should be born after marriage, no matter how short the time, the law presuming it to be the child of the husband. The only incapacity of a bastard is that he cannot be heir or next of kin to anyone save his own issue. In England the maintenance of a bastard in the first instance devolves on the mother, while in Scotland it is a joint burden upon both parents. The mother is entitled to the custody of the child in preference to the father. Corsica, in the N. E. part of the island, 95 miles N. N. E. of Ajaccio. Antimony mining, boat building, iron founding, tunny and coral fishing are carried on; besides, there is some trade in oil, wine, and fruit. Population about 30,000. Bastia was founded in 1388 by the Genoese Leonello Lomellino, and was the seat of the Genoese governors for 400 years. It has several times been in the hands of the English, who, under Admiral Hood, last captured the town in 1794.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921, English law still refused to legitimate a child by the parents' later marriage and held that a bastard "cannot be heir or next of kin to anyone save his own issue." Parliament reversed the first rule with the Legitimacy Act 1926, and the Family Law Reform Acts of 1969 and 1987 swept away almost every remaining disability, so that children now inherit equally regardless of their parents' marital status. In the United States a line of Supreme Court decisions beginning with Levy v. Louisiana (1968) struck down such discrimination as a violation of equal protection. The word "bastard" itself has vanished from statute books in favour of neutral language, and roughly two in five births in Britain and the United States now occur outside marriage. (Note that the Collier's text above runs on, mid-entry, into the article for Bastia in Corsica.)
Written for this edition, 2026.