Baptism legal requirements?

Does anyone know what the legal requirements were in the 1830s as to
where a child should be baptised and who should be present? It relates

Eve McLaughlin...

No legal requirements - by that time, baptism itself was not mandatory
(and had not been for well over a century).
A lot of people didn't bother, and the church was glad enough to get in
the fees without fussing over where the people lived on were settled.

A. Jones...

1830s? What fees?

to "Cora Pearl" again (about whom I've probably bored enough in the
past) but for me she's the gateway to other family matters.

Eliza Emma Crouch was clearly born 1836 (it's the only available
"window" between other children), probably in London, but not baptised
until 27th December 1837 in Plymouth along with her baby sister Hannah
Lydia. There are (briefly) reasons to suspect that she may never have
moved to Plymouth with her mother but stayed with grandparents in

Eve McLaughlin...

One thing which WAS necessary was that the baby or child should be
physically present at baptism - shoving down the name without having the
ceremony was very rare indeed (once in a blue moon down for the local
gentry, so there would be a local record of the birth of a child to
them, usually with the note 'baptised at St Mordecai's in London on the
14th of whatever.'
Baptisms of more than one child at a time were not uncommon, where the
family had moved in the interim, had fallen out with the church at the
time, had simply not bothered when X was an infant.

Phil C....

Thanks. Was there a noticeable difference in the attitude of different
social classes (or those who aspired) in those more pious times? I'm
wondering, for other family members as well, whether very late baptism
or non-baptism would have been socially awkward. This family would
have been reasonably well known in local middle-class circles and

myths...

One of my middle-class 18-19C ancestoral families showed distinct
signs of waiting until the baby was 10-15 months old (and the mother
often 4 months pregnant) for baptism, unless the child was sickly at
birth. I have wondered whether the babies had to grow into a special
outfit.

In the 1840s-1850s generation, the weakly neonates were baptised in
the home parish, but the healthy ones were baptised at the "family's
church" a few blocks away (this was City of London where parishes were
vey small), the father giving the family business address next door as
his residence.

certainly had general links to CoE music. I'm reduced to rather
tentative evidence in judging some matters.

London. Her father seems also to have remained (mainly) London based.

If so, she was taken a very long way for baptism. That may be feasible
to fit in with the pretence of her parents marriage continuing as
normal (or with the claimed devoutness of her mother) but I wonder if
there was actually a (canon or civil) legal requirement.