Newsletter 19th
April 2021
Last chance to save 20% at Findmypast ENDS TODAY
Findmypast messaging checks out
Clues from a 60 year-old postcard
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 16th April) click here; to find earlier articles use the customised Google search between
this paragraph and the next (it searches ALL of the newsletters since February
2009, so you don't need to keep copies):
To go to the main LostCousins
website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. If you're not already a
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there's a new edition of this newsletter available!
Last chance to save 20% at Findmypast ENDS MONDAY
19TH
I'm delighted that so many of you have taken
advantage of the EXCLUSIVE offer I arranged with Findmypast, which offers a 20%
saving on all new 12 month subscriptions for both new and lapsed subscribers. All
the information you need is here
in Friday's newsletter, but please follow the instructions carefully if you want
to support LostCousins and earn yourself a free LostCousins subscription.
Findmypast messaging checks out
In the last issue I talked about the roll-out of
private messaging across all of Findmypast's sites around the world, but at the
time I wrote the article I hadn't had a chance to try it out myself.
I got a swift response to my message and whilst
the other person turned out to be someone I already knew (a cousin I originally
found through LostCousins) it was good to know that this new system does work. We
both received email alerts to let us know that there was a message waiting, but
these were delayed by a day - presumably deliberately - so by the time they
arrived we'd already responded!
Note: the one
drawback is that there's no way of knowing who the other person is until they
respond so, like me, you could be messaging someone you already know. Then
again, perhaps that's not such a bad thing we hadn't been in touch for quite
a time, so it was good to catch up.
Clues from a 60 year-old postcard
I suspect that many of you will be able to relate to
this story
indeed, some of you may have done something very similar!
When a letter arrives from a LostCousins member
enclosing a subscription renewal cheque I handle it carefully, like all other
incoming post and deliveries. I can't disinfect it, but I can quarantine it for
a few days so that's what I do.
However I'm glad to say that most of those who
would have previously paid by cheque are now paying by online bank transfer,
which is not only quicker and safer for me, but also cheaper for you (postage is
now a minimum of 66p almost exactly the cost of my weekly season ticket, 13s
4d, when I started commuting to London in the 1960s!).
Note: cheques and bank
transfers can only be accepted from UK bank accounts the cost of processing
overseas payments, even those made by sterling money order is prohibitively
high.
Four years ago I drew the attention of readers to
an entry in the register of St Martin, Herne, Kent which appears to show that Thomas
Oliver Saunders was baptised on 29th February 1769 even though 1769 was not a
Leap Year:
© Image copyright Dean and Chapter of Canterbury;
used by kind permission of Findmypast
Readers
came up with a number of theories which might explain away this apparently
impossible date, but the example that Eleanor sent me this week is literally
written in stone:
This
memorial inscription from St Joseph's Cemetery in Cork, Ireland suggests that
Bryan Garvey died on 29th February 1929 and whilst 1928 was a Leap Year, 1929
most definitely wasn't.
When
I was a boy, I read a book where the plot depended on the hero realising that a
document dated 1752 must have been forged because the date on which it was
supposedly signed was one of the 11 days in September that were lost when England
moved from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. Anyone remember which
book it was?
Note:
talking of plots, I came across this website which details many
of the locations that have appeared in Midsomer Murders since it began in 1997
some of them are remarkably close to where my ancestors lived, though I doubt
any of my ancestors lived in 'chocolate box' cottages!
These
days you can watch TV around the clock, but when I started watching television
in the early 1950s there was only one channel, and not much to entertain a
young boy. Watch with Mother was as good it got during the day, but
whilst I greatly enjoyed Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men as well as Rag,
Tag, and Bobtail I'm afraid I couldn't stand Picture Book, merely
tolerated The Woodentops, and only watched Andy Pandy in the hope
that Teddy would make an appearance (I was certainly not a fan of the eponymous
hero, though I reserved my deepest loathing for Looby Loo).
What
I didnt know then was that these programmes were created in a shed in the
garden of a cottage in Kent. The narrator and co-creator was Maria Bird, who
had been born Mary Elizabeth Bird in South Africa the image below shows a
page from the Bird family Bible:
By
Theobird - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia
Commons
Andy
Pandy is older than me by a few months he made his first appearance in June 1950.
If you want to relive the experience, the BBC Archive on Facebook has an
episode here;
follow this link
for a lot more information about Maria Bird and the children's programmes she was
responsible for.
Tip:
you can view vintage issues of the Radio Times (which, of course, includes BBC television
programmes) here.
Its
just over a week since I had my second jab, and the vaccination centre has been
re-purposed as a sports centre. OK, that's a slight misrepresentation it was
a sports centre in the first place, but was only allowed to re-open on Monday when
lockdown was relaxed slightly on Monday 12th April.
So
far I haven't done anything that I wouldnt have done before I was vaccinated
I haven't been in a shop since last summer but I know that during the past
week many others, particularly younger people who havent been vaccinated yet,
have been out enjoying the sunshine.
The
good news for me and people like me is that so far the vaccines seem to be highly
effective. In the US around 77 million people had been fully vaccinated by the
middle of the week just ended, but so far only 5800 of them had been reported as
contracting COVID-19. Of those just 396 were hospitalised and 74 had died. (See
this CNN report
for more information.)
Whilst
these numbers will no doubt increase over time, these numbers reinforce the
estimates of medical experts in the UK that many thousands of lives have been
saved by the vaccination program. Nevertheless, the amazing reduction in daily cases
in the UK is primarily the result of lockdown, not vaccination we're
still a long way from herd immunity so the relaxation of lockdown will
inevitably lead to some increase in case numbers.
The
other piece of good news
this week is that the B.1.1.7 variant (first identified in the UK), whilst more
easily transmitted, doesn't appear to increase the severity of the disease.
This is where any major updates and corrections will be
highlighted - if you think you've spotted an error first reload the newsletter
(press Ctrl-F5) then
check again before writing to me, in case someone else has beaten you to
it......
Finally, just to mention that the birthday of LostCousins is
approaching it's amazing to think that on 1st May well be 17 years old!
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2021 Peter Calver
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