Newsletter – 11th
October 2022
1921 Census – the moment you’ve been
waiting for!
What you really need
to know about the 1921 Census
Putting the 1921
Census online - the inside story
Can you help with
this research project?
More British than the
English?
Mass burial site
discovered in Wales
SideView for Matches looks
promising
Don’t give a DNA test
for Christmas!
Was this really a
same sex marriage in 1708?
The LostCousins
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1921 Census – the moment you’ve been waiting
for!
Just
last week I was musing about when and whether the 1921 England & Wales Census
might become available on a subscription basis – and my dream has come true!
If
you have a Findmypast Pro subscription you can upgrade the remainder of your subscription
for the fixed price of £19.99, a sum that would barely buy a round of drinks
these days.
Earlier
there was a problem with the Findmypast website which meant that in some circumstances Pro subscribers were
quoted a higher price, but that seems to have been resolved.
For
those who don’t have a Findmypast subscription the good news is that from today
you can buy a 12 month Findmypast Premium subscription that includes the 1921
Census – at £199.99 it’s only £20 more expensive than a Pro subscription, which
makes it quite a bargain when you consider that a standalone subscription to the
1911 Census cost £59.99 in 2009 (or about £85 in today’s money).
In
those days an all access subscription to Findmypast cost £159.99 (well over £200
in real terms), but it didn’t include newspapers, any parish register images, Catholic
registers, the 1939 Register, or many of the other records that we now take for
granted – indeed, almost all of Findmypast’s overseas records have been added
since 2009. Even some of the ‘basic’ British records were missing: there were
no transcriptions of the Scottish censuses, or images of the 1881 England &
Wales census. We’re getting a great deal more in 2022, but paying less in real
terms.
If
you’re an existing Findmypast subscriber but have a Starter or Plus
subscription you can upgrade to a Premium subscription: how much this costs
will depend on which subscription you have now, and how long it has to run, but
there will be minimum charge of £19.99
IMPORTANT:
THE 1921 CENSUS IS NOT INCLUDED IN ANY 1 MONTH OR 3 MONTH
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Please
note that the prices I’ve quoted apply to Findmypast.co.uk – prices at Findmypast’s
other sites are roughly the same but in local currency (ie €23.99 in Ireland, $23.99 in the
US and $34.99 in Australia). Whether you are
upgrading or buying a new subscription PLEASE use the relevant link below (and
temporarily disable your adblocker, if you have one) so that you can support
LostCousins with your purchase. If asked about cookies click That’s fine
(you can always change the settings later if necessary) otherwise we probably
won’t get any commission.
What you really need to know about the 1921
Census
Back
in January I wrote an article which explained how to get the most out of the census
without spending a fortune. I’ve repeated it below, but please note that if you
have a subscription to the census there’s no need to follow the money-saving
tips, which were written at a time when you could only access the census on a
Pay-per-View basis.
·
Who's included? Not just the inhabitants of England &
Wales, but also those of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands; members of
the Armed Forces wherever in the world they were stationed, with the exception
of Scotland; Merchant Navy and fishing vessels that were either in port on
Census Night or returned in the few days following; visitors, tourists, and people
in transit.
·
Who's not included? Anyone who was not within the territory
on Census Night (except as noted above); many people who were homeless or had
no fixed abode; anyone who objected to the census and avoided being enumerated
·
Use the Advanced Search: I'm sure I don’t need
to tell LostCousins members this, but I've done it anyway!
·
Transcripts: you shouldn't need
to view the transcripts, which will cost you an extra £2.50, since all the information
you need to know is either on the household schedule, or can be found by inspecting
the associated images (see the next article for more details).
·
Before buying
an image:
you'll see a mini transcript (as shown on the right), but it will only give
three forenames at most, typically the person you searched for and two others;
it won’t tell you whether the people named have the same surname (in this case
I happen to know that they don't), nor will the head of household necessarily
be one of the people named (in this case he isn't).
·
Make sure you've
found the right household: they are lots of ways to search and you can narrow down
the number of search results by including extra information on the search form;
if you do purchase the wrong household, learn from your experience so that you don’t
make the same mistake again.
·
Census references: the piece number is handwritten on
the 'Cover' (it's preceded by the reference RG15) but is also part of the filename
when you download the image, and this is a much more reliable source; also on the
cover is the enumeration district; the other reference to record is the schedule
number, which is shown in the top right corner of a standard household schedule.
·
Addresses: the address of a household is on the 'Front'
of the form.
·
Large households: the standard form has room for 10 people;
there is a list of the different forms here;
households of up to 20 people should be available as a single unit, but I've
seen an example where due to poor handwriting the link has not been made.
·
Printing: the Print button on the image page doesn’t work
for me (though it works for my wife, who has a different make of printer), but
in any case I prefer to download images to my computer, save them, then adjust
them before printing; some of the inks used in 1921 have faded, so adjusting
the contrast and brightness will usually produce a clearer print (I use the free
Irfanview program which makes
adjustments to the image easy – and it has lots of other features, most of
which I never need to use).
The
image that bears the names of our ancestors and their family members may be the
most important part of the 1921 Census as far as we're concerned, but it's just
one side of the story. Indeed, it's just one side of the form – the back side.
The address, and most of the instructions to householders, are on the front
side of the form – whilst the form is just one of many that were bound into a
book with a stiff cover.
When
you first view the image of a household schedule you'll see that near the
bottom of the page there are thumbnail images of other schedules from the same enumeration
district:
Unless
you have a subscription you can probably manage without seeing who was living
next door, but next to the highlighted Thumbnails tab you'll the words Extra
materials – clicking this will allow you to view other images that you have
already paid for, including the Front side of the household schedule,
and the Cover of the book:
What
you won’t find are the pages from the Enumerator’s Summary Book that we’re
familiar with from the 1911 England & Wales census – that’s because the Summary
Books were stored in the same building as the 1931 England & Wales census,
and were destroyed during World War Two. For more information see this article
from March in which I exclusively revealed the truth about what happened, based
on a letter held in The National Archives, but seemingly missed by other
researchers.
Putting the 1921 Census online - the inside
story
I
was delighted when Stephen Rigden, Records Development
Manager at Findmypast, agreed to write down the story of how the 1921
England & Wales Census was published online – not just because I can share
it with you, but also because it's a record that, sadly, we don't have for
earlier censuses. First published in my 10th January newsletter, it's
an article to read and then re-read, because it provides so much insight into
the process of digitising a census. Do feel free to share it with other family
historians using the link in the contents list at the top of this newsletter
(right click and choose 'Copy link'), but please don’t circulate copies – there
is no need, because this newsletter is online for everyone to read, as are all LostCousins
newsletters since February 2009. And now, over to Stephen….
IT IS A LONG TIME NOW since researchers in
England & Wales have been familiar with the experience of handling original
census returns. I started working as a professional genealogist in 1987 and
even then we used microfilm surrogates in the then Public Record Office at its Chancery
Lane and Portugal Street sites. Of course, there are countless advantages to
digitisation and online publication which none of us would wish to be without –
open access, endless search permutations, speed of research, instant download.
Using microfilms and browsing speculatively in the hope of finding a family of
interest could be quite dispiriting, as was queuing outside in the cold in
Portugal Street. What becomes harder to appreciate when one is accustomed to
the census online, though, is the physicality of a census as an archive collection.
The digitisation of a new census provides a rare opportunity for those involved
to get to know what a census is really like.
The first thing that strikes one is that the
1921 Census is huge. We all know that that must be true, given that it covers
an entire country and more, but it is another thing to see with one’s own eyes
the archive boxes containing more than 28,000 volumes of census material
arrayed on rolling stacks. The sheer size of the collection and the scale of
the task to digitise it are daunting. And in this case Findmypast was entrusted
with and responsible for the entire project from end to end – everything from
laying out and equipping the studio, the initial stocktake, the assessment,
preparation and conservation of documents, the imaging of every piece of paper
in every book in every box, and the post-imaging re-assembly – not to mention
catalogue metadata development, database creation, transcription, cleaning and
standardisation of data, search functionality etc. And all this under conditions
of security and confidentiality.
As readers will know, the 1921 Census was
closed for 100 years under the 1920 Census Act. All images and transcriptions
that we created had to be encrypted – effectively locked up and placed out of
reach until 50 days before release in January 2022. So, although we have been
actively working upon the project since January 2019, we couldn’t access the
material we had digitised until mid-October 2021.
Our work was undertaken on closed government
premises which required security clearance and the strict observance of
protocols – no mobiles, no smart watches or other devices with camera function;
no open windows; no straying from approved walkways within the building. This was
over and above the usual conservation and archive conditions that one would
expect – no food or drink in the studio, no pens, no jewellery except plain
wedding rings, no hand cream.
After the collection was digitised, it was
uplifted from its temporary location and conveyed under conditions of similarly
strict security to its place of permanent long-term storage. From that point
onwards, the physical census is effectively closed again in practice. For the
foreseeable future, then, access to the 1921 Census will only be through the
digital surrogate that Findmypast has created.
The time in the studio was therefore a
wonderful and privileged opportunity to get to know a census inside out. No one
will ever know the 1921 Census as deeply and as intimately as those conservation
team members who worked on this project for so many months. And those of us who
were present during the closing phases of the digitisation project in September
and October 2021 will be the last persons to have that hands-on experience of
the 1921 Census.
So what was it like?
Even when you’ve opened hundreds of the bound volumes, there is still an
excitement in untying and opening a fresh box and discovering what is inside.
Usually, you would find two volumes of approximately equal thickness, but
sometimes just one fat one, or even three or four slimmer books if the pieces
covered sparsely populated areas or shipping. Each piece is a big landscape
volume with tough hard covers front and back, into which the hole-punched census
schedules had been bound. Originally, the volumes had been belted shut with an
integral strap which was bolted to the rear cover board. At some point before
our involvement, broken and damaged belts had been replaced with new straps.
Both types of strap bore a nice Stationery Office ink stamp. The original belts
were left on if still in good condition, but our instructions were to cut them
off cleanly and replace them with archival unbleached cotton tying tape if not.
When you untie the belt strap, or unknot the
tape, and open the book, it stretches well over a metre and occupies a good
part of the width of your workbench. The census schedules themselves had been
laced into the covers, using the four holes punched in 1921 along the left-hand
edge, and we had to cut these ties to release the individual schedules for processing.
The fronts of the schedules contain the address panel, printed instructions and
worked examples. The backs of the forms show the household information that
every researcher most wants to see – details of household members – with the
householder’s signature towards the bottom-right and the schedule number
inserted by the enumerator in the top-right. The schedules were bound into the
volumes with their backs uppermost. This means that when you open a volume and
turn the protective acid-free paper insert, you see immediately the details of
the first household.
Turning over the schedules page by page, you
start to follow the enumerator’s walk and visualise how the census was taken back
in the summer of 1921. Each volume has its own integrity – it enumerates a very
precise and closely defined geographical area. A subsidiary part of the 1921
Census collection contains the so-called Plans of Division (TNA’s archive
series RG 114) which carved up the country into manageable units and, among
other things, described each enumeration district in detail. The Census Office
knew what it was doing with a very high degree of accuracy and certainty.
You start to see patterns too. Patterns of
employment, for example. Page after page show the same or similar occupations,
or the same industry, or the same employer. The pattern of farm labour is
revealed to you. On previous censuses, you would see agricultural labourers,
horsemen and others but without a sense of how they belonged together in the
economic landscape. Suddenly, in 1921, you see how they are working for a
particular local farmer, whose name appears time and time again.
The Census Office was very interested in
employment in 1921, and in particular in the distances people were travelling
to work (this is why workplace was requested on the form). I wasn’t entirely
sure of the benefits to family historians at first, but it quickly becomes
apparent that all sorts of possibilities are opened up by the 1921 Census capturing
details of employment. Firstly, of course, as a genealogist you now know who
your ag lab ancestor worked for and where, or in whose factory your great
grandfather worked his lathe. But you can also find his or her workmates. Local
historians can now see this information and reconstruct a workforce. You could,
if you wish, find all the labourers in a steelworks, or all the ticket
inspectors on the municipal tramway. This was simply not possible with the 1911
or earlier censuses.
When you work with the census as an archive
collection, what you see is context. You see things you wouldn’t see online
because your online search experience is so targeted – with a little luck,
online you should be able to go straight to the person of interest to you. What
this does, for most of us, is limit our experience of the census to our own
families and the specific archival pieces that interest us. It is slightly
better for professional researchers who investigate families other than their
own, and thereby gain a broader understanding, but even their experience amounts
to little more than a glimpse. Working on the digitisation of the 1921 Census
exposes you to all sorts of things you would otherwise have been unaware of –
the variety of different forms (for different places and different types of
sizes of household), for example, or the various returns for institutions such
as asylums, hospitals and workhouses. I’m very keen on browse experiences on
genealogy websites, where you are able to open a volume and then page through
the images from start to finish.
There is a separate browse experience for the
1921 Census available from launch. However, as access is initially pay-per-view
only, take-up of this is likely to be low except in locations such as The National
Archives or the National Library of Wales reading rooms, which are blessed with
free onsite access. In the fullness of time, though, when 1921 Census enters
subscriptions, I’d recommend that all serious family historians take the time
to browse
through at least one entire piece, from cover to cover, even if it is merely
one for your local area. It will take you an hour and probably more but there’s
really nothing like it for developing a deeper understanding of the census as
an archive record. And the good thing about doing that online is that you won’t
end up with the lingering smell of the 1921 Census in your hair and on your
clothes, and your fingertips darkened with the century’s worth of dirt and dust
that has accumulated in the physical volumes!
The 1921 Census is the last for 30 years, due
to the accidental destruction by fire of the 1931 and the lack of a 1941 census
being taken in wartime. As far as anyone knows at this juncture, the 1951
Census will not be opened until 2052. I’d therefore encourage all family
historians with roots in England & Wales, or the Isle of Man or the Channel
Islands, to make the most of the 1921 Census, as it is likely to be the last
family history event of national significance for some time. It really is hard
to think of anything that could eclipse it.
Stephen Rigden, Records Development Manager,
Findmypast
Thank
you, Stephen, not just for the incredible effort and expertise that you put
into the project, but also for taking the time to set down your story – not in
ink that will inevitably fade, on paper that will eventually deteriorate, but
in a digital format that will preserve it for centuries to come. Thank you too
for the suggestion to browse the 1921 Census – now that I have a subscription I’m
going to do just that!
Around
the time this article was first published Dave Annal, a professional
genealogist who spent over a decade working for The National Archives, wrote a
wonderfully insightful blog post focusing primarily on how the censuses were
accessed in the days before the Internet made life so much simpler – you’ll find
it here.
Can
you help with this research project?
In
the past hundreds of LostCousins members have assisted Professor Rebecca
Probert of the University of Exeter with her researches into marriage, bigamy,
and related issues. Now it’s the turn of one of her colleagues to ask for your
help.
My
name is Dr Rachel Pimm-Smith, and I am a lecturer in law at the University of
Exeter. I am conducting a study about the boarding-out regime under the poor
law between its inception in 1870 and the first world war. I am looking for records of first-hand
information to provide insight into the lived experiences of children who participated
in the first public foster care system in England. The results from this study
will be published in an open-access article in the Journal for Legal History.
They will also appear in my forthcoming book about the history of child
protection in England.
- Do you have a family member who
was sent to a foster family outside their parish between 1870-1914?
- Was the foster home organised by
the poor law guardians (as compared to a charity like the Waifs and Strays
Society or Barnardo’s)?
- Do you have any written records
(letters, diaries, memoirs etc) that discuss their memories or
experiences?
If
you can answer YES to all three questions, I’d love to hear from you!
Email:
dr.rps.research@gmail.com
In
the last issue I reported
changes in the law in Ireland that will make it easier for adult adoptees to
find out their true identities, but have you ever wondered what the success
rate is for adoptees and others who try to identify one or both parents using
DNA?
The
answer was revealed last week in a paper co-authored by five experts in genetic
genealogy – all of whom are, I believe, LostCousins members. It’s the first
research to focus on Britain and Ireland – an earlier survey was dominated by
respondents from the US, because at the time Ancestry had only just begun to
offer their test in other countries.
Reading
the paper I discovered some interesting statistics that I don’t recall seeing before:
one was an estimate by Ancestry for the number of people in the UK who had
taken a genealogical DNA test up to April 2019 – it was 4.7 million, about 1 in
11 of the adult population. Another was an estimate of the number of children
fathered in Britain by American GIs during World War Two – around 22,000.
It’s
well worth reading the paper, and if you think the success ratio of around 50%
is low, bear in mind that few of the subjects would have had previous experience
of family history research – after all, it’s hard to get started when you don’t
know who your parents were!
How
successful is commercial DNA testing in resolving British & Irish cases of
unknown parentage?
was published in The Journal of Genealogy and Family History and is
available in PDF format. It’s free to download – you’ll find it here.
In
common parlance the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is often used in a way that implies that
true-blooded Englishmen are descended from the Anglo-Saxons; after all, the very
name of our country derives from ‘Angle’.
Yet
the Angles and Saxons were Germanic tribes who settled on the island of Britain
in the 5th and 6th centuries – if that makes us English
then I’m a Dutchman. And perhaps I am, because many of my ancestors came from
the east of England: research recently reported
in New Scientist found that people buried in the east of England in the
7th century could trace 76 per cent of their ancestry to recent
migration from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.
It’s
no wonder that so-called ethnicity estimates are so often at odds with what we
know about our ancestry – our family trees are based on records, that – if we’re
lucky – go back 500 years. And whilst we get all of our DNA from our ancestors,
we haven’t inherited DNA from all of our ancestors – once you get more than 10
generations back our genetic tree begins to look nothing like our genealogical tree.
Note:
it’s rather like what we see when we trace the branches of our tree, our collateral
lines – many of them die out, but we’re obviously descended from the lines that
didn’t die out, otherwise we wouldn’t be here today. But it does raise an
interesting question – are the ancestors who didn’t contribute to our DNA
essential to our existence? I’ll leave you to ponder that – and if you do have
any thoughts or comments on any of the issues raised in this article, please don’t
write to me, post them here
on the LostCousins Forum where everyone can see them.
The
research on which the New Scientist article is based was published in Nature
and is open access – if you want to delve into the detail, you’ll find it here. Note that
the abbreviation ‘aDNA’ stands for ‘ancient DNA’, and should not be confused
with ‘atDNA’, which is the abbreviation for ‘autosomal DNA’. I found one sentence
particularly interesting:
“…most present-day Scottish, Welsh and Irish
genomes can be modelled as receiving most or all of their ancestry from the
British Bronze or Iron Age reference groups, with little or no continental
contribution.”
More
British than the English?
Mass burial site discovered in Wales
The
remains of more than 240 people, including children, have been unearthed by
archaeologists working on the remnants of a medieval priory found beneath a
former department store in Wales. Believed to be the site of a medieval priory,
the remains include men who died in battle – but around half of those buried were
children.
You
can read more in this article
posted on the BBC News site this morning.
SideView for Matches looks promising
In
the last issue I wrote very briefly about Ancestry’s latest DNA feature, Sideview
for Matches – at the time of writing the article this exciting new feature had
been withdrawn because of teething issues, though beta testing resumed shortly
afterwards, and most readers who have tested with Ancestry DNA now have access.
Having now had several days to evaluate this new feature, I’ve discovered just
how invaluable it is going to be!
When
we test our DNA we’re presented with thousands of clues to the identity of our
ancestors, clues that come in the form of matches with mostly distant cousins. Because
of the way that Ancestry integrates two enormous databases – their bank of DNA results
and their collection of family trees – they’re able to tell us how we’re
related to some of our matches with a high degree of reliability. ThruLines
and Common Ancestors are not perfect because they are dependent on
family trees which are not perfect, but they work well, especially the latter.
We
can build on those foundations using Shared Matches, to identify the
part of our tree – though not usually the precise line – in which we’ll find
our connection to some of our other cousins. However we’re still left with many
thousands of matches that are unused – they are clues, but clues to what?
The
strategies in my DNA
Masterclass will identify hundreds of matches that are worth a closer look,
either because our cousins have ancestors in their tree with the same surname
as our ancestors, or because they have ancestors from the same town or village.
These are the matches most likely to help us knock down our ‘brick walls’, but
we’re still left with thousands more matches with cousins who don’t have family
trees, or have large gaps in their trees, or whose trees don’t contain any information
that obviously matches our own tree.
SideView
for Matches provides a helping hand, by dividing most of our matches into Maternal
and Paternal. Don’t expect the algorithm to get it right every time, but my experience
to date suggests that it gets it right well over 90% of the time. Ironically it’s
your closest matches that might look strange – whilst they won’t be assigned to
the wrong side of your tree, you may find that they are shown as ‘Both sides’
or ‘Unassigned’. That’s because we share so many segments of DNA with our
closest relatives that the chance of one or two of those segments being incorrectly
labelled by the SideView algorithm is fairly high.
The
one circumstance in which it might appear that a close match has been wrongly
assigned is when Parent 1 and Parent 2 have been incorrectly identified – not by
the algorithm, but by the user. If you remember, we first encountered SideView
when Ancestry split our ethnicity estimate between our parents – and given how
flaky ethnicity estimates are, some users will inevitably have been misled. I
had a hunch which way round my parents were, but I certainly wasn’t convinced
enough to share my guess with Ancestry. As it happened my hunch was correct –
but it might not have been. Even now I have not identified Parent 1 and Parent
2 (though I obviously know which is which) because this would make it more difficult
for me to assess how well SideView for Matches is working.
There’s
a little information about the way SideView works on the page that is displayed
when you click the new menu item (‘By parent BETA’), but the best source of information
I’ve found so far is this post
on the blog of Leah Larkin, one of the most respected gurus of genetic
genealogy.
If
you manage multiple DNA tests please remember that the labels Parent 1 and
Parent 2 are chosen at random. As it happens, for both myself and my brother
Parent 1 is our mother – but that’s just coincidence.
All
autosomal DNA tests use similar technology, so you might think it wouldn’t matter
which test you take – I’m well-known for my moneysaving tips, so you might
expect me to recommend one of the cheaper tests on the market.
And
yet I don’t – because my long experience of working with DNA has taught me that
being able to access the world’s biggest database of genealogical DNA tests is far
more important than price alone. Only by taking Ancestry’s own test can you get
into their database of more than 23 million tests – because, whilst you can
transfer your Ancestry results to other providers, you can’t upload results from
other providers to Ancestry.
The
other feature that sets Ancestry apart from other sites is the way that they integrate
DNA with family trees – they’ve done this far more than any other site, which
not only makes it easier for you and me, it saves us an enormous amount of time
and effort.
Please
use the relevant link below so that you have a chance of supporting LostCousins
when you make your purchase (if you’re not taken to the offer page first time,
log-out from your Ancestry account then click the link again).
Ancestry.co.uk
(UK only) – REDUCED FROM £79 to £59
Ancestry.com.au
(Australia and New Zealand only) – REDUCED FROM $129 to $89
Ancestry.ca
(Canada only) – REDUCED FROM $129 to $79
Ancestry.com
(US only) – REDUCED TO $59
Tip:
make sure you follow the advice in my DNA Masterclass – doing what comes
naturally won’t work nearly as well, as I explained
recently.
Don’t give a DNA test at Christmas!
Ancestry
generally quote 6-8 weeks from receipt of a sample before the results are
available online, and you might have to wait even longer for some of the features
such as ThruLines and SideView to update.
But
in my experience the actual waiting time is more likely to be 3 or 4 weeks, provided
you don’t send the sample off at a time of peak demand – such as in the days
and weeks after Christmas.
So
if you decide to give a DNA test as a Christmas present, find a way of giving it
to your friend or relative ahead of the festive season, and explain to them why
you’ve done this. If they can get their results back before Christmas then so
much the better, as it’ll be something they can share with their extended family!
Was this really a same sex marriage in 1708?
Just
7 miles east from the home of LostCousins, the parish church of St John &
St Giles at Great Easton is of Norman origins, though built on the site of a
Saxon structure, and the quantity of Roman bricks and tiles used in the construction
hints at an even longer history.
It
was there on 19th October 1708, that according to the parish
register, William Radley married Mathew Church – and there can be no doubt
about what is written:
All
Rights Reserved. Reproduced by courtesy of
the Essex Record Office D/P 232/1/1 (digital image 59)
However
when something doesn’t seem right it’s a good idea to investigate how reliable the
source is. You don’t have to go far to see that errors have been made, for
example near the top of the same page is a marriage where the surname of the
bride isn’t stated:
All
Rights Reserved. Reproduced by courtesy of
the Essex Record Office D/P 232/1/1
And
also on the same page is a baptism entry that had been omitted completely, and
added later in a different hand:
All
Rights Reserved. Reproduced by courtesy of
the Essex Record Office D/P 232/1/1
Someone
who has made two errors could well have made a third (or more – I haven’t
attempted to verify the other entries, these are just the ones that stood). And
on the facing page we can see who William Radley really married – his wife’s
name is correctly recorded in the baptism entry for their first child:
All
Rights Reserved. Reproduced by courtesy of
the Essex Record Office D/P 232/1/1
As
Lady Bracknell might have said, to mess up one register entry may be regarded
as a misfortune, to mess up two entries looks like carelessness, but to make three
errors on one page is carelessness of the highest order. (The cleric might
perhaps submit in mitigation that the name Martha Church was so close to ‘Mother
Church’ that he got confused.)
It’s
important to remember that even ‘primary sources’ have errors and omissions.
Vicars did not complete the register at the time – they relied on their own
notes, the sexton’s notebook, and sometimes on their memories.
I’d
like to thank John Young, Vice Chair of the Essex Society for Family History
for pointing out the ‘same sex’ marriage, and Essex Record Office for allowing
me to reproduce the images. By the way, Essex was the first county to put full colour
scans of parish registers online, way back in 2008 – before either Ancestry or
Findmypast had any parish register images.
It’s getting cold, so
my wife has been in the garden gathering the remainder of the harvest and
moving delicate plants into our small greenhouse. I’ve just taken a photo of what
she has gathered this week – including more than enough chillies to last us
until next year!
Half
a century ago, in the days before Britain’s High Streets were overwhelmed with coffee
shops, cafes, and bars I used to visit an establishment called Planters
in Cranbrook Road, Ilford on a Saturday afternoon – not only did they have a
sizeable restaurant at the back, they sold leaf tea and coffee beans in the
little shop at the front.
Those
of you who also grew up in the Ilford area will recognise this photo
of Cranbrook Road – Planters is somewhere in the distance on the
right-hand side. Wests (in the foreground) is where my mother bought
patterns and many of the fabrics she used – I don’t know that she ever wore a
dress that she hadn’t made herself.
The
coffee beans I bought in those days were Kenya Peaberry – I loved the flavour,
and was over the moon to discover recently that I could buy them online. I started
buying the coffee ready-ground (most suppliers will grind it to order and ship
it in a vacuum pack), but a few months ago I mistakenly ordered beans and,
since I no longer have the brass and wood hand grinder that I used in the 70s,
I decided to splash out on an electric grinder. As usual I headed over to the Which?
website – Which? magazine is published by the Consumers’ Association, a
charity founded in 1957 to protect the interests of consumers, so it’s a trustworthy
independent source.
Even
though price is not a factor in their reviews, it’s not always the case that the
most expensive products get the best ratings – and in this case the grinder that
came top of the list with an ‘Excellent’ rating for everything other than noise
was this model, currently on sale for
£44.99, which is fractionally less than I paid in June, and less than a quarter
of the price of the grinder that came second. I soon found the perfect settings
– which for me was 5 cups and a coarse grind. I use a stainless steel 1 litre
vacuum-insulated cafetiere (this one),
which makes coffee that tastes even better than I remember from the Cona
coffee maker I was given for my 21st birthday in 1971. It’s an awful
lot easier, too!
I’ve
continued buying beans because the flavour and aroma of the coffee is so much
better when the beans are freshly ground. I know that the fashion is to buy
bean-to-cup coffee machines, but they’re jolly expensive, take up more space,
and are harder to clean. Each day I weigh out 36g of coffee beans (cost about
61p including shipping), and my wife and I get three large mugs of delicious coffee
between us – better than any coffee I’ve tasted since the 1970s.
How
do I weigh the coffee beans? I put the grinder on our electronic kitchen scales
with the lid removed, press the zero button on the scales, then keep pouring
until the reading shows 36g (or thereabouts). It’s so easy, I wish I’d switched
back to Kenya Peaberry years ago – it’s extravagant, of course, but as
extravagances go it’s definitely on the cheap side.
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......
I’m off now to search the 1921 Census – my first challenge is to
find my grandfather’s work colleagues at Towler & Son in Stratford, as some
of them are in a photograph that I inherited.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2022 Peter Calver
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