Newsletter - 19th November 2017
Resolving birthdate discrepancies
Register Office drama: Love, Lies & Records
FamilySearch will require you to log-in from next
month
Bell foundry strikes a chord with Heather
Trinity Mirror newspaper archive to go online
MASTERCLASS: supercharge your searches at Findmypast EXCLUSIVE
You don't have to be related to be friends
Book review: Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors
Unusual parish register entries
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Resolving
birthdate discrepancies
We can never know precisely
when most of our ancestors were born - only a minority of baptism register
entries include birthdates - but if they were born after the commencement of
civil registration (1st July 1837 in England & Wales) we tend to assume
that the date shown on the birth certificate is correct. After all, why
wouldn't it be?
When civil registration was
introduced in 1837 the legislation allowed for births to be registered free of
charge within 6 weeks - and 180 years later, the same time limit applies. However in 1837 there was no penalty for failing to register
a birth unless the parents of the child had been requested to do so by the
registrar and as a result, in his 7th Annual Report (for 1843-44) the Registrar
General was forced to note that many births had not been registered. Indeed, it
was not until the 1874 Births and Deaths Registration Act that the onus fell on
the parents or other interested parties to register a birth, although
fortunately by then the proportion of unregistered births had fallen very
considerably as initial misunderstandings about the new legislation dissipated.
But in the context of this
article it’s not non-registration that interests us, but the possibility of the
date of birth being recorded incorrectly - and without a doubt the penalty
prescribed for late registration was a key factor. Seven shillings and sixpence
was a substantial sum in the 19th century - as much as a week's wages for some
of the poorest members of society, and according to the Measuring Worth website,
7s 6d in 1837 is the equivalent of nearly £300 today when the increase in
average wages is taken into account. It's therefore understandable that parents
who had inadvertently failed to register their child's birth within the free 6 week period might have chosen to give a false date of
birth.
When there's a discrepancy
between the date of birth shown on the birth certificate and that recorded in
the baptism register, which one should we believe? Assuming
that the date in the baptism register is earlier, I'd look at the birth
certificate and calculate the number of days between the stated date of birth
and the date of registration. If it’s 40, 41, or 42 I would strongly suspect
that the parent registering the birth falsified the date in
order to avoid a fine for late registration.
However it's not always as simple as that. There's a lot of
circumstantial evidence from the censuses, from death certificates, and from
the 1939 Register, that people didn't always remember ages correctly - and that
when they had to calculate the year of birth, they might get the subtraction
wrong. Although infant baptism is the norm in the Church of England, some
people were baptised as children, some as teenagers, some as adolescents, and
some as adults - it's not unusual for a bride or groom to be baptised just
before the marriage.
Edward recently wrote to me
from Australia about a remarkable set of discrepancies in one of the families
in his tree, and he kindly put together a table showing the key information:
Notice that there is a
variety of differences between the two sources - in the case of Sarah the dates
differ by precisely a year, a discrepancy that is most likely to be due to
memory or miscalculation; for Maria the only difference is in the day of the
month, and since the birth was registered 40 days after the stated date of
birth my guess is that Maria's birth date was falsified in the birth register.
When it comes to Harriett both the year and the month are wrong - I'm inclined
to believe that the birth certificate shows the right year, but the wrong
month. Perhaps it's significant that it was the father who registered the
birth, and not the mother (as in the case of Sarah and Maria); was there
confusion about who was going to register the birth, or was the mother - who
was unable to sign her own name - determined that she wouldn't be intimidated
again by a snooty registrar?
Elizabeth is interesting - in
her case both the day and the year differ, but as the birth was registered well
within the 6 week period I doubt the date was
deliberately falsified. Perhaps she was born around midnight? As for Ellen,
it's virtually inconceivable that the age of 6 months shown in the 1851 Census
is out by a year - so we can be certain that she was born in 1850, not 1849 -
but there's no obvious explanation for the discrepancy in the day of birth,
since her birth was also registered well within 42 days. Given that Ellen was
baptised on the same day as Harriett, is it possible that there was confusion
between the two birthdays? According to her birth certificate Harriett was born
on 16th October, the date given as Ellen's birthday in the baptism register.
If you have similar
discrepancies in your own tree you'll be able to use these examples as a guide,
to help you deduce what the truth is. We can never be 100% certain that we've
made the correct deductions but - as you well know - there's very little in family history that is
100% certain!
There's a fascinating blog post
by Audrey Collins of the National Archives on the official History of Government website - she writes about the challenges
faced by government departments, especially the General Register Office, during
World War 1.
Register Office
drama: Love, Lies & Records
This week a new drama series
began on BBC1: set in the (fictional) Greater Leeds Register Office, Love, Lies & Records stars Ashley
Jensen as Kate Dickenson, a Registrar whose promotion to Superintendent
Registrar is about to be announced - but the day doesn't quite go to plan. If,
like me, you watched the 2014 documentary series Births, Deaths and Marriages (filmed at Westminster Register
Office) I'm sure you'll agree that the drama is pretty
authentic - and if you didn't, it's a chance to find out how hectic and
varied the life of a registrar can be.
Episode 2 is at 9pm on
Thursday 23rd November, and if you missed the opening episode you can watch it
on BBC iPlayer (provided you live in the UK and have a TV licence).
FamilySearch
will require you to log-in from next month
From 13th December you will
be required to log-in at the FamilySearch site before being allowed to search
their billions of records from around the world. It's free to register and in reality many users, me included, have been logging-in for
years (it helps that, as with LostCousins, the site
logs you in automatically provided you didn't log-out on your last visit).
Some of you might worry that
you'll be swamped with emails, but so long as you don't tick the boxes (on the
Notifications tab of the Settings page) you won't receive a thing.
Tip: some of the image sets at FamilySearch are hidden
away, even after you have signed-in - see my articles
from February 2016 about the Sussex parish registers. A few of the Sussex
registers are no longer available online - I believe these are instances where
the necessary permission has yet to be gained from the incumbent - but don't
assume that just because you're unlucky with the first parish you check the
others aren't available either (the example in last year's article certainly
still works!).
Bell foundry strikes a chord with Heather
When LostCousins
member Heather read my recent article
about the Whitechapel Bell Foundry it had a special meaning for her, because her
husband spent a day working as a labourer in the foundry, removing the cast
from a bell (and by all accounts it was back-breaking work).
You see, last year Heather and
her family took part in the BBC series The
Victorian Slum, which challenged 21st century families to live as their
ancestors - or yours - might have done. (Readers in the US may have seen the
series on PBS.)
You can see the 'Potter
family' in costume on the right - that's Heather in the middle, with her
husband Graham and daughter Alison - and whilst the series is no longer
available on BBC iPlayer there are clips you can watch when you follow this link. You'll also
find entire programmes on YouTube.
In the late 19th century most
of my ancestors lived in the less salubrious parts of London, though thankfully
not the worst streets and tenements, the ones that are marked in black on
Charles Booth's contemporary maps. Since
1880 wages in the UK have increased by 5 times more than prices, so even the
poorest families of today are likely to be better off than a typical working class family in the late 19th century - and that
really emphasises just how tough it was for our ancestors.
Whilst Heather's connection
with the foundry was fictional, I also had an email from Ann, whose husband's
grandfather was a carpenter and bell hanger at the foundry - indeed, many
members of his family worked there over the years.
Trinity
Mirror newspaper archive to go online
On Thursday Findmypast and the British Newspaper Archive announced a
two-year programme which will lead to more than 12 million pages from the
archives of Trinity Mirror being digitised and made available online for the
first time. Most welcome is the focus on 20th century newspapers, which are
currently under-represented in the British Newspaper Archive, even though it is
already by far the largest online archive of British newspapers.
Best known as publishers of
the Daily Mirror, Trinity Mirror also
own hundreds of local newspapers. The
Birmingham Daily Gazette and The
Birmingham Post are already online, as is the now-defunct Daily Herald.
MASTERCLASS:
supercharge your searches at Findmypast
Although the baptism search technique decribed below was first revealed to readers of this
newsletter a year ago, changes in the workings of the Findmypast website mean
that I've had to revise it slightly.
Now that the main genealogy
websites have thousands of record sets and billions of records it's more
important than ever before to use effective search strategies, otherwise we
risk missing the very records that we’re looking for. Although searching
individual record sets is almost always the best way to go, if you don’t know
where your ancestor was born you might want to search all of
Findmypast's baptism records simultaneously.
However, when you search all of Findmypast's birth and baptism records the Search
form is a compromise:
Note that there's no
opportunity to enter the forenames of the parents - and whilst you won't always
know what they were, when you do know one or the other (or even both) it's
frustrating not to be able to home in on the records most likely to be of
interest, especially if the surname is a common one.
Fortunately there's a way to adapt the basic search to make it
more powerful - supercharge it, in other words. But to do this for baptisms
we'll have to leave the Births & Baptisms and go to the All Records search;
first make sure that Britain is selected, ie:
Type in the name of the
person whose baptism you're seeking, for example 'john calver'
and click Search. If you use the same
example (and I suggest you do until you become familiar with the technique) the
search will produce 5,503 results. I could, of course, have reduced the number
by specifying a range of dates, eg 1820 +/- 10 years,
but as this is just an example I've kept the search as simple as possible.
Next take a
look at the URL in your browser - in effect this is the web address of
the search results page you're looking at. It should appear something like this,
although you'll probably have to move the cursor along the line to see all of
it:
https://search.findmypast.co.uk/results/united-kingdom-records?firstname=john&firstname_variants=true&lastname=calver
Let's suppose that I know the
forenames of both of the parents, and that their names
were Thomas and Mary. If I add the following text to the end of the URL shown
above, I can repeat the search so that it only produces results where the
parents' names were Thomas & Mary:
&fatherfirstname=thomas&motherfirstname=mary
This is perhaps a little too
specific - for example, the name Thomas is often shortened to Thos - so I can widen my search to include variants:
&fatherfirstname=thomas&fatherfirstname_variants=true&motherfirstname=mary&motherfirstname_variants=true
By the time I've pasted this
onto the original URL it looks like this:
https://search.findmypast.co.uk/results/united-kingdom-records?firstname=john&firstname_variants=true&lastname=calver&fatherfirstname=thomas&fatherfirstname_variants=true&motherfirstname=mary&motherfirstname_variants=true
Hit the Return key to display
the revised search results, and amazingly from 5,503 results we've reduced the
tally to a mere 7, all of which have the right parents' names. Don't believe it
works? Click this link and see it in
action - you don't need a Findmypast subscription to try it out. You can even
edit the URL to carry out a search of your own.
As I mentioned earlier, most
URLs are too long to fit on the screen, so you will usually need to scroll
right to find the end.
Tip: when you edit the URL in this way you can't click
the Search button, or the Edit search button - instead you have
to position the cursor on the URL (it can be anywhere on the line), and
hit the Return key.
Before we move onto census
searches, here's a valuable tip for when you're searching parish registers at
Findmypast - look at the Useful Links
(bottom right) because you'll often find a list of parishes showing the years
of coverage for each parish (though there may be gaps which aren't noted).
Now I'd like to show you some
more tricks, this time to do with censuses.
Searching the 1911 Census
As most of you know, when you
enter your relatives from the 1911 England & Wales census on your My Ancestors page the two references
you're asked to enter are the piece
number and the schedule number.
But whereas you can search other England & Wales censuses using the census
references we use, neither Ancestry nor Findmypast allow you to search using
the schedule number (even though it appears in Findmypast's transcription).
There's no way round this at Ancestry, because they didn't transcribe the
schedule numbers (which means that if you use their site as your source, you'll
need to read the number off the handwritten schedule - it's usually in the top
right corner).
However, I discovered that at
Findmypast it's possible to search the 1911 Census using both the piece and
schedule references, even though there isn't a box for the schedule number on
the search form. Indeed, if you click the grey arrow against any of the 1911
entries on your My Ancestors page,
you'll see that's precisely what happens.
For example, if I click the
arrow alongside my relative Alfred Stevens, whose household are listed on
schedule 203 in piece 1095, when the results page appears the important part of
the browser command line reads as follows:
You can carry out the same
search by clicking here. Now try
searching for another census schedule, not by clicking Edit Search, but by editing the relevant parts of the command line.
Try leaving the piece number
as it is but changing the schedule number by one, up or down, which will
typically tell you who the neighbours were. When you've made the change, make sure
the cursor on the command line, then press the Return key. Depending whether
you went up or down you'll get either the Player household or the Nevin household - but you can use this trick to find any
private household in the 1911 Census, just so long as you have the piece and
schedule numbers.
Tip: you don’t need to be a Findmypast subscriber to
see the Search results - only if you want to display the full transcription, or
the schedule itself, will you need a subscription.
Searching all of the England
& Wales censuses from 1841-1901 simultaneously
Have you ever noted down the
census references for a household in your tree, but forgotten to record which
census they relate to? For my next trick I'm going to show you how you can
search all of the censuses from 1841-1901 at the same
time.
Here's what the Census search
form looks like:
As you can see, there are no
boxes where you can enter any of the census references. Without entering
anything on the form click the Search
button so that you get a page of results, and take a look
at the URL near the top of the browser window - it should look like this:
http://search.findmypast.co.uk/results/united-kingdom-records-in-census-land-and-surveys/and_census
All we need to do now is add
the census references that we know, which in this example are:
?pieceno=1583&folio=143&page=14
Paste these parameters at the
end of the URL, and press Return. Almost by magic you'll get 20 results, all
from the 1851 Census. (Click here to try
it out yourself - you don't need a Findmypast subscription.)
I hope you find these tips
useful - do please let me know if you discover a 'hack' of your own!
Sue Palmer, who has been a LostCousins member for 10 years, recently wrote to me about
a major breakthrough she'd had in her research - and
she kindly agreed to share her discovery with other members in the hope that it
will inspire you to keep going, rather than give up. Over to Sue…..
"I had a major breakthrough recently - it was all thanks to the 1939 register (which I would never have known about without reading Peter's newsletters).
"I started my research over 30 years ago following my father's death. At the time I had a job, husband and young family to consider and so time was limited. I used to dip in and out of research according to what else was happening in my life. Even when the World Wide Web arrived there were very few online resources at first, and in any case I didn't have access to the internet, so I read as many books as I could find on the subject of genealogy to get me started. Knowing so little about my father's family (even my mother knew few details), this was the part of my family that fascinated me most.
"My father, William Scott jnr was born 1908 and brought up in South Shields with his 2 siblings. He rarely spoke of his family - it was a taboo subject. I did know, however, that he left home at around 14 years old when he found work on one of the many ships sailing from Tyne Docks. I also knew that his mother was Ada Scott née Henderson, and that his father William Scott snr, was a Police Constable. By visiting St Catherine's House in London and trawling through the indexes I obtained birth certificates for my grandparents Ada and William snr, and also their marriage certificate; from then on I was hooked! I found my grandfather's police record held by the Tyne & Wear Archives Service in Newcastle, and learned that William snr was an alcoholic and violent man who was discharged from the Police for several offences including throwing a man off the top of a tram. No wonder my father left home at an early age! The 1911 census shows the family living in South Shields. According to family rumour my grandmother Ada left her husband and 3 children (my father included) to live with a soldier who had been awarded a Victoria Cross.
"My search was difficult to say the least, as Ada used 4 different surnames, 2 of those fictitious. However after many years of travelling up and down the country visiting various records offices, hours spent poring over online resources in more recent years, and making the mistakes I am sure most researchers make - including, ordering incorrect certificates and following the wrong family because I didn't check details thoroughly - I have at last found out what happened to my grandmother and her partner.
"Through the 1939 register I found Ada by her date of birth, and discovered the name of her partner - James Upton. The register also confirmed the name of their daughter, Edna. I checked at VConline.org.uk where I discovered James in an article which not only told of his exploits, but also mentioned his 2 families including Ada and Edna.
"Ada did indeed abandon her family in 1919 and leave South Shields with James Whitbread Upton VC (by this time Ada was pregnant with James's child). It is likely that James was stationed at the local barracks, although he was originally from Lincoln - where he left a pregnant wife and 2 sons. The couple disappeared for a few years but were later found to be living in North London with their daughter Edna Upton - James was the proprietor of a large Social Club and Dance Hall. James and Ada married bigamously in Derbyshire in 1927 and another daughter Rita, was born but died soon afterwards.
"James Whitbread Upton enlisted with the 4th Sherwood Foresters at Derby in May 1906. He was a regular soldier who served in Ireland and India until war broke out, then James was sent to France in November. In May 1915 at Rouges Bancs, Corporal Upton rescued the wounded while exposed to rifle and artillery fire. One wounded man was killed by a shell while James was carrying him; when not actually carrying the wounded he was engaged in dressing and bandaging. James was presented with his VC ribbon in France on 8th July 1915, whilst the Victoria Cross medal was presented to him by King George V at Windsor Castle on 24th July. He was also presented with an illuminated address and a purse of gold by the Mayor of Nottingham. James continued to serve in France until 1918 and was demobilized in March 1919. During the Second World War he was a Captain in 12th Middlesex Battalion Home Guard and was promoted to Major in 1942. James died in 1949 and his Victoria Cross is held at the Sherwood Foresters museum in Nottingham.
"Ada retired to Cornwall and died in March 1974. I would have loved to have a conversation with her, or even a photograph - but at least I found her."
© Sue Palmer 2017
You don't
have to be related to be friends
Perhaps the best-known quote
from To Kill a Mockingbird is "You
can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose
your family".
One of the great things about
connecting with people through a genealogy site is that whether
or not you turn out to be related to them, you do at least have
something in common - a shared love of family history. I was reminded of this
when Bronwen wrote to me a week ago:
"…some 12 years ago I contacted someone in New Zealand when we thought we had a relative in common. It proved not to be so but I was living in the area this ancestor came from and was able to send out details of the village and the area. We continued to correspond over various brick walls in both our families and over the years have formed a friendship that will last for as long as we are both computer literate…"
Book review: Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors
Although Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors - a guide for family historians by
Robert Burlison was published in 2009, it was
recommended to me recently by a LostCousins member,
and as I hadn’t read it, I bought a second-hand copy for less than £4
(including shipping). This is, after all, an important topic - most of us will
have ancestors who fell on hard times.
Let me say first
of all that if you purchase the book expecting to find out precisely what
records have survived you're likely to be disappointed - the information on the
records themselves is relegated to a 20-page appendix, and whilst it covers numerous
types of records there's little to indicate what has survived in different
parts of the kingdom.
But if you want an
appreciation of how tough things were for our forefathers, and how the law
regarded paupers, vagrants, and beggars over the centuries, then it’s an
excellent guide. For example, did you know that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth
vagrants could be whipped, branded, and ultimately hanged? I didn't - nor did I
realise that until 1839 there was no Poor Law system in Ireland. So whilst you might not learn much about your ancestors as a
result of reading this, it could prove enormously useful in putting what you do
know about them into an historical context.
The author also recounts that
in mid-16th century Norwich an apparently poor woman who was begging was found
to have £44 on her when apprehended - a sum which he reports as being equivalent
to £8,800 in terms of today's money, though the Measuring Worth website suggests it would be the equivalent of
£15,500 allowing for price changes, or an amazing £189,000 if the increase in
average wages is taken into account; certainly £44 would have been many times
the annual wage of most workers in the 16th century. Unfortunately
I haven't been able to verify this story - no reference is provided - but this
archived page
on the BBC History site gives an overview of poverty in Elizabethan England.)
In summary it's an excellent
book for social historians - and for family historians too, just so long as you
ignore the misleading title! There are more second-hand copies at Amazon, or
you can buy a new copy if you prefer - follow this link to see what's currently available.
Tip: prices of second-hand books vary considerably
according to supply and demand, especially if they are out of print - it's best
to be patient.
Unusual
parish register entries
Is this 1695 marriage
register entry from the parish of Hanby in North
Yorkshire suggesting that the marriage was carried out by an imposter, or by a
non-conformist clergyman? I think it’s probably the latter, but perhaps you've
come across something like this before and can put it into context?
This transcription is from
the Yorkshire County Magazine (Vol.III 1893); whilst you'll find the scanned register in
the Yorkshire collection at Findmypast, this particular entry
is very faint, and hard to decipher.
On Saturday 13th January
there are two half-day courses at the Society of Genealogists that should be
well-worth attending, as the speakers have excellent reputations. In the
morning (from 10.30am to 1pm) Dave Annal will be
talking about Brickwalls and Lost Ancestors - a topic that's
relevant to all of us. In the afternoon (from 2pm to 5pm) John Hanson's subject
will be Getting the Most from the
Ancestry Website. Each of the courses costs £20, but members get a 20%
discount (remember too that until the end of November you can save 25% when you
join the Society of Genealogists - you'll find details of the offer I
negotiated here).
I'll be doing a lot of
speaking myself next spring - on Saturday 3rd March I'll be at the North West Kent Family History Society in Dartford, on
Saturday 17th March I'll be talking about Genetic
Genealogy to my local U3A here in Stansted, and on Saturday 19th May I'll
be speaking to the Essex Society for Family History at Galleywood
Heritage Centre near Chelmsford. But that's not all - I'm going to be running a
series of one hour genealogy workshops at the Rocha
Brava resort on the Algarve coast in Portugal in January, February, and April:
on each of the 4 dates there will be a session for absolute beginners, followed
by one for those with some experience. If you think that you, or somebody you
know, might be interested, get in touch and I'll let you have more details.
Ancestry in the US have a DNA
Sale, with tests priced at $79 (down from $99) until Thursday November 23, but 23andMe
have an amazing offer when you buy 2 of their ancestry tests - they're just $49
each! However, it's important to remember that the only way you can search for
cousins in Ancestry's enormous DNA database is by testing with them - Ancestry don’t
accept transfers from other companies. That's why I re-tested with Ancestry earlier
this year, having tested with Family Tree DNA 5 years earlier.
23andMe are now offering
ancestry-only tests in the UK, priced at £79 (previously UK customers could
only buy a £149 test which included health-related information). But the newest
offers are from Family Tree DNA, the only major company offering Y-DNA and mtDNA tests - last time I checked you could save $40 on a
Y-DNA test, down from $169, but their offers are changing weekly, so click the
link below for the latest information.
Living DNA still have a sale
on - their tests are reduced in every territory, so if you've already tested
with one of the big companies, but want a more detailed ethnicity estimate
(especially if you have mainly English ancestry), now's your chance.
By using the links below you can support LostCousins
- in return I'll do my best to support you by continually updating them so that
they take you to the best offers I can find:
BEST FOR FINDING COUSINS AND
KNOCKING DOWN 'BRICK WALLS'
Note: you may need to log-out from
your Ancestry account before clicking the link
Ancestry
DNA (UK & Ireland residents - Black Friday sale starts Wednesday 22nd)
Ancestry DNA (US
residents - buy 3 get 1 FREE)
Ancestry DNA (Canada
residents)
Ancestry DNA (Australia & New Zealand
residents - reduced from $149 to $99 plus shipping)
BEST FOR Y-DNA
FamilyTreeDNA (worldwide)
BEST FOR ETHNICITY
(ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE ENGLISH ANCESTORS)
BEST FOR HEALTH (ANCESTRY-ONLY
TESTS ALSO AVAILABLE)
23andMe (UK
residents)
23andMe (US
residents)
Although standard membership
of LostCousins is free, you probably wouldn't be
reading this newsletter were it not for the support of the members who choose
to pay a small annual subscription. Thanks to their generous contributions LostCousins is able to remain
independent - and arguably it's that independence that makes this newsletter
worth reading.
One of the benefits of being
a subscriber is access to the Subscribers
Only page, and I've recently added links to all of
my Masterclasses - the most sought-after of all the articles in these newsletters.
Note: you won't see the Subscribers Only page in the
website menu unless you are a subscriber (and have logged-in).
Subscriptions are NOT renewed
automatically - that isn't even an option - but I do send out an email reminder
when a subscription is about to run-out. However you
can check the renewal date at any time, simply by logging-in and going to your My Summary page.
Note: subscribers also received a preview of this
newsletter (on Saturday) although, unfortunately, due to a disagreement between
Word, which I used to write the email, and the email program used to send it,
the hyperlink was corrupted (although it worked if the text was copied and
pasted into the browser). My wife says it serves me right for working at
weekends!
I live in a part of the
country where the tap water is 'hard' - which has an upside and a downside. On
the positive side the water tastes better than any bottled water, irrespective
of price, but on the other hand our kettles soon accumulate limescale deposits
that reduce their efficiency and offend the eye. At one time I used to buy
proprietary descaling products, but they were expensive, and after the job was
done I had to boil the kettle several times to remove any residual chemicals,
and the hot water this produced was generally wasted. Vinegar is cheaper, but it’s
even harder to get rid of the taste if the kettle is made of plastic. I then
started using food-grade citric acid or lemon juice, on the basis that any
slight residue would be harmless, and whilst this entailed less wastage of
water and electricity, it was still a relative expensive solution (and citric
acid can be hard to find in supermarkets).
Update: I did also try one of those
coiled wire devices that several readers have suggested - it just couldn't cope with
the very high levels of calcium.
So I was delighted to discover that I could buy
food-grade citric acid in bulk through Amazon - I paid £14.99 (including
shipping) for a 5kg tub. This is a very substantial saving compared to buying
small packs in the supermarket, which - when I could find them - would
typically cost £1 or more for a mere 50gm. The tub arrived yesterday, and I
celebrated by descaling our electric kettles, not both at the same time, but
one after the other - as this enabled me to use water and electricity more
efficiently. They now look as good as new!
Note: we do have a water-softener - or rather, we
will, when it is finally plumbed in - but softened water shouldn't be used for
cooking on account of the high sodium content; you're
not even supposed to use it in dishwashers.
Talking of Amazon, they’re the
ones who are responsible for introducing Black Friday into Britain. I'm not
sure we should thank them for that, but it's hard to ignore the bargains - I've
no doubt I'll succumb, as I did last year. If you do too, please use the links
below so that you can support LostCousins:
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca
(I was a little annoyed to
see that the Echo Dot is reduced to £34.99 - that's £10 less than I paid less
than 2 months ago in a so-called Duty Free Shop at
Stansted Airport. On the other hand, the latest Which? magazine reckons it's a bargain at £50, so I didn't do so
badly.)
By the way, LostCousins will also benefit if you take
a free trial of Amazon Prime after clicking the relevant link above - whether or not you decide to continue after the 30 days are
over. Black Friday is a particularly good time to be a Prime member, because it
provides early access to some of the most attractive offers.
I'm going to end with my
recipe for Marie Rose sauce: Avocado Crevette is one of my all-time favourite
starters, and it’s coming back into fashion, but shop-bought Marie Rose sauce
doesn't cut the mustard. The ingredients for the sauce will all be found in your
store cupboard or fridge: mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and
Tabasco; the quantities you use of each are entirely up to you, but I like it slightly
hot, but with an underlying tomato flavour and pinkish colour (if it appears
grey you've probably used too much Worcestershire Sauce and too little ketchup).
Enjoy!
Findmypast have offers on World subscriptions in
Australia, Ireland, and the USA - they all include the amazing 1939 Register:
The DNA offers article has been updated with
Black Friday offers from Ancestry.
Peter Calver
Founder,
LostCousins
© Copyright 2017
Peter Calver
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