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Topics - whitehound

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1
Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition / a job title in Victorian India
« on: Tuesday 21 October 14 20:13 BST (UK)  »
Can anybody make anything of this?  This is the job-title of my great great grandmother's second husband, in south-east India in 1869.  He's a conductor in *what* department...?

2
The Irish Tithe Applotment Books are handwritten, and no two researchers seem to have used the same layout or column headings.  Can anybody read this lot?

First block - ????????
Second block - Total Acres
Third block - rate per acre
Fourth block - amt of Composition (I *think* that's "amount" but wouldn't swear to it)
Fifth block - Total on each ??
Sixth block - Grand total

3
Can anybody help with four or five unreadable words here?  In each case I've included a few legible lines for context and to give a feel for the handwriting.

First block:
William Langford
of Donnybrook ???????

Second block (dealing with the son of the above):
William Langford
of Donnybrook
?????????????
Deed d. 28 June 1783

Third block:
Elinor Moore
b. 10 Sept 1741
Ann G??????ing

Fourth block:
St Mary
Michl Langford = Hannah ??????
Nov 29 1747

Superficially the last one looks like "Hannah Muire" - except that if you look at "St Mary" on the line above the 'M' is totally different.

4
Apologies if this query turns up twice - I'm having trouble getting it to post.

I'm deciphering a family tree for the Raes of Keel House, Kerry, drawn up around 1920.  Unfortunately, although the lettering is nice and clear visually, the writer had one of those handwritings which contain a lot of long horizontal squiggles.  I've managed to develop a feel for his or her writing and have deciphered nearly all of it, but the purpose of the tree is to show not bloodlines but the transfer of estates and mortgages, and there are some legal terms in here which I don't recognise, and can't decipher from first principles because of the bad handwriting.

Incidentally d. sometimes stands for "died" and sometimes for "dated" depending on the context.

To make life easier I have prepared an alphabet which shows samples of capital letters in this person's handwriting since, for example, their E looks like a G and their I looks like a backwards C.

Here is my first query.  This description says:

Robert Rae
eld. son in 1781  of Newcastle, Co Limerick  One of the [what? - looks like "lives" but does that make legal sense?] in deed dated 13 Nov. 1781   b. c. 1738

This Robert Rae presents an interesting puzzle.  He is listed at far left of a line of siblings, described as "Robert Rae eldest son in 1781", and next to the right of him we find "Edward Rae eldest son in 1777".  My first thought was that they'd been listed out of order, that Edward was the first-born and that he died between 1777 and 1781 - but that doesn't work because Edward's entry clearly states that he died in 1786.

I can think of three possibilities:

1)  Robert was first-born but he was born (or at least conceived) before his parents' marriage and wasn't accepted as a legitimate heir until some time between 1777 and 1781.

2)  Robert was first-born but he disappeared for some reason and as at 1777 he was presumed dead, but he then returned prior to 1781.

3)  Robert and Edward were the same person, who for some reason was calling himself (or being called by the family lawyer) Edward in 1777 and Robert in 1781.

Have I missed any possibilities?

5
Can anybody help with a few missing words out of these two baptismal records?  In each case I've included the whole entry so people can get a good idea of the handwriting.

The first is from 1777 and says:

Anno 1777
July 13th
John Shirran in Mains of Whitehill had a son brought forth by his wife Nancy Ironside bap-tized named James Shirran witnesses A????? Shirran and Robert Ironside both (there?)

The second is from 1806 and says:

June 17th
James Shirran and Christian Black in Craigculter had a son named John, batpized before Peter Cline and George Bidd???  ???? hill of New Deer

In case anybody is interested this is, almost certainly, the "Jamie Shirran frae New Deer" who wrote a well-known and very bouncy Bothy Ballad called The Buchan Turnpike, about the building of a toll-road in the Buchan district in 1808.

6
Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition / can't read crofter's second occupation
« on: Saturday 17 November 12 12:15 GMT (UK)  »
Hi.  Can anybody read these occupations?

I'm fairly sure the first one says "Pauper & stock. knittr" which would make sense because she was a single mother and there was another single mother in the house who is clearly listed as "Stocking knitter."  Do people agree that that's "pauper"?

Then we have the pauper/knitter's child, a scholar, and then below that

"???? & crofter of 3 acres."

There's another chap in the same house described unambiguously as "Carpenter & farmer of 5 acres" but I don't think this illegible one can be another carpenter because there's no sign of a descending loop, nor for the same reason can he be another pauper.  It looks lke "Praentor."

7
Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition / baptism near Turriff - COMPLETE
« on: Sunday 04 November 12 18:38 GMT (UK)  »
I need help deciphering the baptism record of my great grandfather's eldest brother.  I'll give a bit of background because it may bear on what some of the words say.

The Scottish Records Office has dated the extract as 10/04/1853.  The surname at the side is Shirran or Sherran.  The boy's name was Adam, born in 1853 at a place called Shandscross near Turriff.

His parents were Alexander Shirran, son of John Shirran and Margaret Gray, and Jessie Tawse, daughter of Adam Tawse and Elspet Wisely.  Shandscross was where the Tawse family lived.  Alexander and Jessie had married at Shandscross in March 1852.

I see:

"Shirran: On the twenty fourth day of February eighteen hundred and fifty three Alexander ??? Jessie Tawse ??? Shandscross had a son born ??? on the tenth day of April and named Adam ??? ??? Tawse ??????? Turriff."

8
Occupation Interests / Victorian medical qualifications
« on: Tuesday 09 October 12 03:21 BST (UK)  »
A chap I know who lives in Australia is writing a book about his late father-in-law Major Sam Newland (who was a war hero and also a close friend of my grandfather's) and about his father-in-law's father, Surgeon-Major Arthur Newland, who was a pioneering photographer and lexicographer and the resident medic for a tribal people called the Chin in north Burma.  Unfortunately most of Arthur's records have not survived.
 
Arthur had an unspecified medical qualification of some sort from the University of Madras, an LRCP & S from the Royal Colleges in Edinburgh which he gained in November 1880, and probably some sort of midwifery qualification, also gained in Edinburgh.  His studies in Madras must have been of a level that equipped him to practice medicine, or nearly so, for he was only in Edinburgh for a matter of months prior to taking the LRCP & S and seems not to have actually studied at the Royal Colleges: he arrived in Edinburgh already trained and then was examined on what he already knew.  He was known either as Major Newland or just as Arthur Newland, and seems never to have used the title Dr Newland.
 
Some time ago, a couple of years I think, this chap in Australia communicated with somebody in Edinburgh about the meaning of Arthur's qualifications but either the information or his memory of it is suspect, because a) he had confused the degrees of MB and MD and b) he had confused the Medical School of the Royal Colleges with the one at the university and c) he swears one of his contacts told him Arthur did a full academic year at Edinburgh University, which is untrue both on the count that the university has no record of him, and that he wasn't in Edinburgh anything like a full year.  So the information he recalls getting from his contacts has to be treated with caution.
 
He swears that this person he spoke to told him that the LRCP & S was definitely a lesser degree than an MBBCh, and that Licentiates were not entitled to use the honorific "Doctor".
 
On the other hand, the Chief Librarian at Surgeon's Hall says that the LRCP & S was much the same standard as an MBBCh and that Arthur was most definitely entitled to call himself doctor, since he was in the Medical Register.
 
Everything I have managed to find out myself supports the idea that the LRCP & S is/was of the same medical standard as the MBBCh, although there are suggestions that it was a qualification which originally tended to be given to people of lower social class than those who went to university, and Debrett's says that holder of the MBBCh usually take precedence over those with the LRCP & S.  This I take to be because the Royal Colleges don't have the whole leafy quadrangles and boating-clubs social scene that you get at the older universities, rather than because there is any difference in medical standard.
 
I have come across some people on the net who have LRCP & S to their name and don't seem to call themselves doctor, but I don't know whether that means they aren't *allowed* to call themselves doctor or whether it's one of these social oddities like surgeons in some specialties calling themselves mister.
 
So, in summation, I need to know,
 
a)  Whether an LRCP & S is as good a qualification, medically speaking, as an MBBCh, and was this the case in the Victorian era?
 
b)  Is it indeed the case that people who have an LRCP & S but not an MBBCh do not call themselves doctor, or tend not to do so, and if this is indeed the case, is it because they aren't allowed to do so, or because they for some reason choose not to do so?
 

9
Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition / difficult 1920s medical handwriting
« on: Saturday 28 July 12 03:56 BST (UK)  »
This is from a medical assessment of my great great uncle William Shirran, made circa 1921 with a view to increasing his army disability pension.  William had been shot in the right thigh during a battle in Afghanistan in 1880.  The passage here describes the current state of his wound: I can read most of this but there are some blanks.

This is what I make of it:

on lower 1/3 R. Thigh on int aspect.  [?? looks like oral but that doesn't make sense] scar ½" clean healed.  Healthy : non adherent.

Just above knee joint on [??] aspect circular  depressed adherent scar.  [??] scar ant. aspect of thigh lower 1/3.  ¾" wasting R Thigh above knee no wasting below.  Complete bony ankylosis R knee.  Very obvious wasting Quadriceps [??] tensor : no obvious shortening.

Marked varicosity of veins on post. aspect R Thigh.


Can anybody help fill in the [??]s?

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