Newsletter – 31st May
2024
Save on Ancestry DNA NEW OFFERS
GRO increases prices
for online services
Where
were your ancestors in 1851?
Don’t forget the
Masterclasses!
Invasion of the body
snatchers
What happened to Quarter Sessions?
Who Do You Think You are? magazine LAST CHANCE – ENDS TODAY
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous
issue (dated 24th May) 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
member, do join - it's FREE, and you'll get an email to alert you whenever
there's a new edition of this newsletter available!
Save on
Ancestry DNA NEW OFFERS
There
are big savings on Ancestry DNA tests for readers who live in Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand – and whilst Ancestry’s tests certainly
aren’t the cheapest, they are very definitely the best (and I’ve tried all
of the tests from all of the major companies). Even if you had to pay
twice as much – as I did when bought my first Ancestry DNA test – it would still
be worth it.
The
offers have already begun, and will run until 6th
June at Ancestry.com.au and until 16th June at the UK and Canada sites. Wherever
you live, and wherever your ancestors came from, it’s a great opportunity to
fill in some of the gaps in your family tree using the ONLY record that doesn’t
lie! Please use the appropriate link below so that you can support LostCousins
with your purchase – if it doesn’t work first time please log-out from Ancestry
and then click the link again, just to make sure:
Canada Father’s Day Offer: Save up to $65 on AncestryDNA®.
UK Father’s Day Offer: Save 30% on AncestryDNA®.Offer ends 16 Jun 2024
Of
course, while DNA doesn’t lie, it’s possible to misinterpret the results if you
don’t know what you’re doing – so ensure you not only read my DNA
Masterclass, but also follow the simple, straightforward steps that you’ll
find there.
GRO
increases prices for online services
There’s
bad news for family historians with ancestors from England & Wales: with
effect from 28th May the cost of viewing historic birth and death
entries online has gone up significantly. The Online View service, which
provides instant online access, was launched last July at £2.50, but from now
on you’ll have to pay £3 (an increase of 20%). Ironically the latest annual
inflation figure is just 2.3%, though as we all know to our cost it has been
much higher than that for most of the past three years.
At
the same time the cost of PDF copies of entries has increased from £7 to £8 (it
was £6 when the service was first trialled in November 2016). There is usually
a turnaround time of just under a week for PDF copies, which are also delivered
online – the delay and higher cost reflect the human involvement in the
process.
The
Registration of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Civil Partnerships (Fees and
Records) (Amendment) Regulations 2024 can be found here –
you will see that there are also increases in the cost of some other services
(for example, a certificate now costs £12.50 when ordered online, or £17 when
ordered by phone or by post). This Explanatory
Memorandum is easier to follow.
Note:
we now know why the GRO site was closed for ‘scheduled maintenance’ two
weekends ago.
The 1961 Census revealed
Early
this month I shared
with you a blank household schedule from the 1951 Census – I hope you’ve
downloaded a copy for your records. I’m glad to say that I’ve now found a site
with a PDF copy of the household schedules used in England and Wales for the
1961 Census – you will find them on this page.
In
1961 a 10% sample of households were given a more detailed form to complete –
Part I had the same questions as on the standard schedule, Part II asked for
academic and/or professional qualifications as well as occupational information
(similar to the 1921 Census), Part III asked for
information about people who were temporarily absent.
If
you followed the link to the page I recommended above
you’ll have seen a picture of the IBM 705 mainframe computer that processed the
results – or rather, part of it, because it would have filled a room. If it was
the top of the range model it would have had 80k of memory, and whilst that’s
10 times the memory of the first home computer I bought (in 1978), and 5 times
the minimum memory of the first IBM PC (launched in 1981), it’s trifling in
modern terms (you’d need 100,000 times as much memory to run Windows 11). The
700-series of computers was valve-based – before long it would be chips with
everything.
Do you remember the
short Look at Life documentaries that were produced by the Rank
Organisation and shown in the Gaumont and Odeon cinemas? Hundreds of them are
now available on DVD, and I recently purchased volume 5 in the series, which
has 64 films in the ‘cultural heritage’ category. I chose this volume because
the first film on Disc 2, entitled Counting
Heads, takes a
look at the 1961 Census. You don’t have to be interested in family
history to enjoy this nostalgic look at the way things were done then, but if
you are then it’s particularly fascinating. And it’s amazing how much they can
fit into a 10 minute documentary!
And
there are 63 other films, most of which I’ve yet to watch – but it’s certainly
a nostalgic feast for the eyes (and the ears – commentators don’t speak that
way any more!). You can see a list of all the titles with a
brief description of each if you follow this link
(they’re in the review by Colin Smith – it was the top review when I checked
just now).
If
you’re lucky you may catch some of these films on TV – Stephen, the member who
recommended Counting Heads to me, caught it by chance on the Talking
Pictures channel. But I prefer to watch things at my leisure, and £17 for over
10 hours of nostalgic viewing isn’t a bad deal.
Where
were your ancestors in 1851?
This
month The Genealogist added the 1851 Census to their innovative Map Explorer, which
already features the 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, and 1911 Censuses, as well
as the 1939 Register.
Of
course, they’re not miracle workers – if the census doesn’t give the address of
the property it won’t be possible to identify the
precise location – but when it works it’s really impressive! Just to give you a
flavour of what you can expect, there’s a 20 minute
video on YouTube where Mark Bayley demonstrates Map Explorer. It’s well over a
year old so won’t show the full current capabilities, but you’ll nevertheless
get a feeling for how it works.
I’ve
arranged an exclusive discount offer with The Genealogist – you can get their
top subscription, a 12 month Diamond Subscription, for
just £89.95, a saving of £50 – and you’re guaranteed to pay the same reduced
price so long as you keep it going (they call it a Lifetime Discount). And as
an extra bonus, in the first year you’ll also get a 12 month
subscription to the online magazine Discover Your Ancestors (worth
£24.99).
To
take up this offer please follow this link.
Tip:
at The Genealogist you can search in ways that users of other sites can only dream
of – it’s the site I turn to if I’m really desperate to
find someone in the census.
So good they named him twice
It’s
not unusual for the eldest son to be named after his father and it’s perfectly
normal for children to take their father’s surname. But this example from 1867
is just a little bit different:
©
Image produced by permission of Manchester City Council and reproduced by kind
permission of Ancestry
Scholes
Scholes, the eldest son of Scholes Scholes was baptised at St Andrew’s, Ancoats,
Manchester in September 1867. In fact, he came from a long line of Scholes Scholes – not only was his father Scholes Scholes, his grandfather was also
Scholes Scholes. And yes, you’ve guessed it – his
great-grandfather was also Scholes Scholes.
Looking
at that baptism register entry cold you might possibly have misread ‘Scholes’
as ‘Scholar’. Funnily enough in the 1881 Census the 14
year-old Scholes Scholes was indeed a
‘Scholar’:
©
The National Archives – All Rights Reserved. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
I wonder what it was like for Scholes Scholes, scholar, at school – did he get mocked and bullied
because of his name? But even if he was, it didn’t prevent him from giving his
own eldest son the same name in ceremony at All Saints, West Gorton in
1888:
©
Image produced by permission of Manchester City Council and reproduced by kind
permission of Ancestry
No
doubt the question uppermost in your mind is “Did the youngest Scholes Scholes continue the family tradition?”. Sadly
we’ll never know whether he planned to do so – he died on 3rd March
1912, 9 months to the day after his marriage to Emily Phillips. His posthumous
son was born on 27th June 1912:
As
you can see, he was registered as Samuel, but we can only speculate as to
whether that would have been his father’s choice.
Don’t forget the Masterclasses!
A
lot of people are attracted to LostCousins by the newsletters, which are
designed to appeal to serious researchers like you and me - and by all accounts
it seems that readers find them enjoyable as well as informative. On 4 or 5
occasions each year the newsletter includes a Masterclass – usually an updated
version of the previous edition from a year or two earlier.
The
aim of the Masterclasses is to set down on paper just about everything there is
to know about a particular topic – not so much to educate, because we’re all
experienced researchers, but to remind us of the basic principles and the key
resources, things that were once second nature, but are all too easily
forgotten as we learn more sophisticated techniques. And you will occasionally
come across something you didn’t know about before, whether because it’s a newly-released resource, or maybe as a result of your
research taking a different turn and ending up in uncharted territory.
If
you are a LostCousins subscriber, ie you’ve paid a
subscription, you’ll have access to the Subscribers’ Only page, which
has links to the latest edition of each of the Masterclasses, as well as to key
issues of the newsletter which comprehensively dealt with new resources such as
the 1939 Register, which is a bit like a census but is different in more ways
than most people realise (even though it was released nearly 7 years ago, I
still get emails from people who are getting to grips with the differences!).
Of
course, you don’t have to pay a subscription to access the Masterclasses –
they’re free for everyone, and you can find them simply by putting the word ‘masterclass’ into the customised Google search near the top
of any newsletter. But if you are supporting LostCousins by contributing it’s
that much easier (and you can be sure you have found the latest revision).
So
please make use of the Masterclasses – not only will it be to your advantage, it will allow me to spend more time writing newsletters and
dealing with truly exceptional problems. And maybe, just maybe, spending some
time on my OWN family tree!
Invasion of the body snatchers
My
wife recently came across this fascinating online article
about body snatching in the Essex village of Little Leighs, in 1823. Just one
of the culprits was caught, and he wasn’t convicted of stealing the body of
poor Joanna Chinnery – only of stealing her clothes. Nevertheless, when Samuel
Clarke was found guilty at Essex Quarter Sessions in January 1824 he was
sentenced to 7 years transportation. Several of the newspaper reports of this
case in the British Newspaper Archive are free to view – you can see them here, on the Findmypast site.
Note:
you will need to log-in or register at Findmypast, but you won’t need to take a
free trial or provide any payment information. Over a million articles are free
to view, and you can restrict your search to free articles if you wish.
Body
snatchers (sometime called ‘resurrectionists’) sold the corpses to medical
schools for use in training doctors. But William Burke and William Hare
couldn’t wait for people to die before stealing their bodies: they murdered 16
people in Edinburgh rather than stealing the corpses of people who had already
passed away. Hare was offered immunity from prosecution in return for turning
King’s Evidence: Burke was hanged, following which his body was dissected and
his skeleton displayed in the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh Medical School
(where it remains – you can see it here).
The
exploits of Burke and Hare inspired others to emulate them – the newspapers of
the day called them ‘Burkers’, as you can see from
this 1831 article, also free at
Findmypast. Their exploits led to the passing of the Anatomy Act 1832, which
imposed restrictions on the supply of corpses. You can find out more about body
snatchers in this PDF document
on the National Archives website – though designed for schoolchildren, it’s far
more interesting and informative than anything we were given in our history
lessons in the 1950s and 1960s!
When
I wrote
about the history of women in policing a month ago I didn’t realise quite how
much information there is online about police history generally. For example,
the document about the Little Leighs body snatcher is just one of more than 60
free PDF documents on the website of the Essex Police Museum – there is a list
of titles here.
Was
The Essex Bungalow Murder a title inspired by Horace Rumpole’s
most famous case – The Penge Bungalow Murders – or was it the other way
round? John Mortimer’s novel was
published in 2004, though it was set in the 1950s, and frequently alluded to by
Rumpole in Mortimer’s earlier writings (it was his greatest triumph –
Rumpole’s, not Mortimer’s).
In
that earlier article I provided a link
to Greater Manchester Police Museum. In the capital, London’s Metropolitan
Police doesn’t have a lot of information online, but there is an excellent
research guide which you can download here
(it includes links to records at the National Archives, some of which can be
downloaded free of charge). If you are aware of resources for police forces in
other areas, please post then on the LostCousins Forum.
Tip:
if you qualify for membership of the forum you’ll find
a link on your My Summary page.
What happened to Quarter Sessions?
In
England the first Justices of the Peace (JP) were appointed following a 1327
statute. Chosen for their standing in the community, rather than their legal
know-how, they would try people for minor crimes such as petty theft or
drunkenness at Petty Sessions, but refer more serious
crimes to the Quarter Sessions which were held 4 times each year in the main
towns in each county.
At
the Quarter Sessions two or more JPs would hear cases in the presence of a
jury, but crimes which were punishable by death were referred to the Assizes.
During the 1700s the number of capital offences increased significantly, so
many prisoners were tried before a visiting judge at the Assizes, which were
also held in the main county towns. As early as 12th century six
judicial ‘circuits’ were established, and ‘circuit judges’ are so called
because they literally go round the circuit, trying cases at the Assizes. I
understand that in terms of seniority they are below High Court judges, but
above district judges.
Note:
this page
on the Bar Council website shows the areas covered by each circuit.
The
records of Quarter Sessions are usually held in the local record office, so you
are very likely to have come across them, either when visiting in person or
online. For example, if you follow this link
you can see what Ancestry have on their site, or use this link for Findmypast – but you’ll
also find that some record offices have indexed their quarter sessions records,
or have done so with the help of volunteers (see this Staffordshire
index), and there are some other indexes on line – for example, there is a
partial index
to West Kent Quarter Sessions for the period 1692-1713 (it was created by a
LostCousins member in Canada using the LDS microfilm).
But
if you’re wondering why we don’t hear about Quarter Sessions in modern times,
the Courts Act of 1971 replaced them (and Assizes) with Crown Courts – this
followed the recommendations of a Royal Commission chaired by Lord Beeching,
better known as Dr Beeching during his brief tenure as Chairman of British
Railways in the early 1960s. (Prior to this two Crown Courts had been
established in the 1950s, in Liverpool and Manchester.)
Who Do You Think You are? magazine LAST CHANCE
I've been a reader of Who Do You Think
You Are? magazine ever since issue 1, and I can tell you from personal
experience that every issue is packed with advice on how to research your
family tree, including how to track down online records, how to get more from
DNA tests, and the ever-popular readers' stories. Naturally you also get to
look behind-the-scenes of the popular Who Do You Think You Are? TV
series.
There's an extra special introductory offer for
members in the UK, but there are also offers for overseas readers, each of
which offers a useful saving on the cover price:
UK - try 6 issues for just £9.99
Europe - 13 issues (1 year) for €74.99
Australia - 13 issues (1 year) for AU $125
Rest of the world - 13 issues (1 year) for US $89.99
To take advantage of any of these deals (and to
support LostCousins) please follow this link.
Tip:
these offers were due to end on 31st May, but were still live when I checked on the morning of 1st June.
In
late 2007, a few years before my father and my mother’s sister passed away, I
recorded interviews with them so that I wasn’t reliant on hastily-scribbled
notes or my all-too-fallible memory. Re-watching the recordings over the past
week I’ve picked up things that I missed the first time
round.
For
example, when I was talking to my father about his schooldays – which were cut
short when he contracted TB – he mentioned the names of some of his
schoolfriends at Ilford County High. One name in particular stood out at the
time because it was so unusual that I asked my father to spell it – and though
he couldn’t remember the boy’s first name, the surname Chacksfield
was so unusual that I had no difficulty identifying him in the 1921 Census and
the 1939 Register (resources that, sadly, only became available years after my
father’s death).
I
wish I had been able to look them up at the time because it transpired that in
1921 the elder brother of Robert Chacksfield (my
father’s pal) was working as a compositor for Waterlow
& Sons – the printing company that my father worked for in the late 1950s
(long before Robert Maxwell took them over and ran them into the ground). My
father had run his own small printing business, but when he joined Waterlow it was as a printer’s reader (or, more quaintly, a
‘corrector of the press’).
©
The National Archives – All Rights Reserved. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
I
then discovered that until Robert Chacksfield’s
father, Edgar, had died from TB in 1919 he had been a printer’s reader – and
quite possibly for Waterlow & Sons, given his
son’s subsequent employment there. It seemed a remarkable coincidence, but
perhaps it wasn’t coincidence
at all – perhaps it was my father’s friendship with Robert Chacksfield that inspired him to join the printing industry
in the first place?
My
father had to leave school when he was in the 4th form after he too
contracted TB. He went into the Harold Wood Sanatorium not long after his
brother Horace, his only sibling, came out – that may not, of course, be a
complete coincidence. Horace never fully recovered, and
died of TB at the age of 25. Had Horace not contracted TB in his late teens he
would have been the first of our family to go to university – instead that honour fell
to me, 40 years later. Dad spent 10 months in the sanatorium – it was normal for
someone who contracted TB to be sent away for treatment, not that there was
very much they could do in the days before antibiotics.
What
will you discover when you re-watch (or re-listen to) the recordings you made
of relatives who are no longer around to answer questions? Will you, like me,
pick up on things that were insignificant at the time, but now have new
meaning?
And
what legacy will you, in turn, pass on to future generations by recording your
own memories while you still can? I used a camcorder back in 2007 but these days
it can be done more easily – and better – using Zoom. See this article
from 2022 in which I explained how easy it is to share your knowledge and your
knowhow with your relatives, present and future, using Zoom.
Although
my wife grows spinach in her kitchen garden, the slugs probably get to eat as
much of it as we do, so I still buy baby spinach leaves from the supermarket –
a 250g pack goes a long way, so at £1.15 it’s a good buy. However
I used to have a problem with it going soggy in the fridge, especially once it
went beyond the ‘use by’ date. There are lot of articles online that recommend
using layers of kitchen towel, but fortunately the first suggestion I came
across was much simpler – open the pack, add a single sheet of kitchen towel,
then reseal. It really does work!
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......
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2024 Peter Calver
Please do NOT copy or republish any part of this newsletter without permission - which is only granted in the most exceptional circumstances. However, you MAY link to this newsletter or any article in it without asking for permission - though why not invite other family historians to join LostCousins instead, since standard membership (which includes the newsletter), is FREE?
Many of
the links in this newsletter and elsewhere on the website are affiliate links –
if you make a purchase after clicking a link you may be supporting LostCousins
(though this depends on your choice of browser, the settings in your browser,
and any browser extensions that are installed). Thanks for your support!