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Topics - melba_schmelba

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1
The Common Room / Ancestry Lunacy Patients Asylum Admissions - no records after 1912
« on: Saturday 09 March 24 19:37 GMT (UK)  »
It seems Ancestry's title for their dataset, and the source information below, is wrong. The Commissioners in Lunacy was replaced in 1913 by the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency, and it appears only the admissions under the old Commissioners of Lunacy up to 1912 are actually included in Ancestry's dataset. I assume Ancestry in fact have no data on Asylum/Mental Hospital admissions from 1913-21 or afterwards.

Ancestry.com. UK, Lunacy Patients Admission Registers, 1846-1921 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
Original data: Commissioners in Lunacy, 1845–1921. Lunacy Patients Admission Registers, Series MH 94. The National Archives, Kew, England.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/9051/

This page confirms the Commissioners merged into the Board of Control in 1913
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F260716

This is the National Archives parent category that includes all the old Commissioners and later Board of Control records
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/h/C621

Admissions records can be browsed here (none by name, just by volume), but none after 1912 have been indexed or digitized online so would need to be consulted at the National Archives
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/h/C21184/cfirst

2
Unlike the post 1858 civil wills, and the Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills pre 1858, many of the smaller regional will court collections on Ancestry do not listed approximate death dates guessed from the probate date (obviously in a few cases there can be quite a gap i.e. if the executor(s) did not administer the estate in their lifetime(s)). So if you search by death date through the main wills search page, you will not find any results for many of these smaller courts. So you should always search by the 'Any Event' date in the case of wills.
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/categories/clp_wills/?searchOrigin=navigation_header
  There also seems to be another issue, in that some will collections may not even turn up in the wills category search i.e. Dorset Wills is one I have found

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/2119/

3
The Common Room / Marriage licences, why they were obtained, and their cost
« on: Thursday 15 February 24 11:09 GMT (UK)  »
I have often wondered why ancestors married by licence, when presumably there was some not insignificant cost involved, compared to the banns process which was presumably free, although the church wedding would presumably have its own modest charges but perhaps more costly in wedding and brides' dresses, wedding reception etc. I have also wondered what the actual cost would be - this article below gives one example, a Faculty Office special licence (quite unusual as opposed to ordinary licences, see second post) in January, 1915 for a corporal rushing home to marry his pregnant fiancé was £29 5s 6d (although lucky for him he only had to pay £5, the rest was covered by the War Office and stamp duty waived)

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/home-front-stories/love-and-war/

This page below goes into various reasons why a marriage might have occurred by licence apart from pregnancy, one or both of the parties going abroad, men carrying off unwitting young heiresses, a desire for confidentiality, perhaps due to perceived opposition from family members to the marriage. Or a desire to marry in a place where it would not be usual to marry, a chapel or an Inns of Court, or a parish in which neither couple were living (not stated there, but reasons I have seen discussed for that are not wanting to marry in their local church due to local or familial opposition, or simply because it was more exciting and a big occasion to marry in a 'posh' city church, than your local one):

https://sogdata.org.uk/bin/aps_browse_sources.php?mode=browse_dataset&s_id=359&id=390

A pilot study of a 25 year period was done on the Vicar General licences from 1726-50, this found:

"three quarters of the applicants lived in the City of London or in neighbouring parishes, both north and south of the Thames - that is, the Greater London of the day. A further 20% lived in the adjacent Home Counties and only 5% further afield. About a quarter of the applicants were either widows or widowers, but only a comparatively small number (1% of the males and 8% of the females) admitted to being under 21. Nearly half (42%) of the applicants lived in the same parish as each other and only 15% lived in different dioceses. "

4
Whilst researching Whitechapel in my causes of death thread, I found the engraving below, dated from about 1650, on the London Picture Archive website, which I think deserves its own thread :).

https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk/view-item?i=32161

It quite possibly is the only view existing, that shows pre Great Fire Whitechapel in some detail, showing what is now Whitechapel Road, and the old medieval St. Mary Matfelon, Whitechapel church on the left, with a windmill, which I think may have been moved to the other side of the church as artistic licence just to get it in the picture :D. You have several horse riders in the street, a grand coach, smaller carts and pedestrians. On most of the street, you can see tall pointed roofed timber framed and plaster houses with jettied fronts. Nearest on the right, you can see grander houses with perhaps some elaborate plasterwork (pargetting) or woodwork on the front of the second one down the street perhaps as on Sir Paul Pindar's house from Bishopsgate, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O39115/sir-paul-pindars-house-house-front-and-unknown/

an example of pargetting in a house in Clare, Suffolk
https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/news-and-events/maintenance-diary/ancient-house-may-2018/

At the end of the street, is the original Aldgate, by the London Wall, all the gates were demolished in the 1760s. On the far left in the distance, you can see the Tower of London, the pointed roofs of many streets, and little churches dotted about. The very tall spire just left of centre may be the old St. Paul's Cathedral. Just to the right of the Aldgate, is the old church of St. Botolph, Aldgate. And not far behind inside the city walls just to the right, is what seems a large church, possibly the original 1622 built St. James, Duke's Place, notorious for its clandestine marriages :o??

And rather amazingly, what I originally thought were the walls of London depicted close by, I have realised are sketches of fortifications made during the civil war, possibly the only surviving contemporarily made illustrations of them, and the map below shows a 'Hornwork' was built very close to Whitechapel church

'hornwork
Fortification. A single-fronted outwork, the head of which consists of two demi-bastions connected by a curtain and joined to the main body of the work by two parallel wings. It is thrown out to occupy advantageous ground which it would have been inconvenient to include in the original enceinte.'


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitechapel_Mount#/media/File:London_as_fortified_(1738).png

You can explore from above using the 1658 Faithorne and Newcourt map with points marked in the link below, select use this overlay on the left, you will need to zoom in, as it only covers the old city, Westminster, Southwark and close outskirts. Each church has a number which is indexed in a box under the Thames
https://www.layersoflondon.org/map/overlays/great-fire-of-london-testing

A new church was built after the fire so this may be the only detailed view of the old church existing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_Matfelon

a watercolour of the 1670s church from 1811 by John Coney
https://www.meisterdrucke.us/fine-art-prints/John-Coney/1149839/Church-of-St-Mary%2C-Whitechapel%2C-London%2C-1811.html

The church's up to date entries from the 'Survey of London' project on UCL blogs
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/survey-of-london/2016/06/10/the-church-of-st-mary-matfelon-whitechapel-part-one/

https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/survey-of-london/2016/07/01/the-church-of-st-mary-matfelon-whitechapel-part-two/

5
The Common Room / Three Myths of the Great Fire of London - Museum of London
« on: Thursday 08 February 24 11:07 GMT (UK)  »
Found this whilst browsing, thought this might interest everyone here

https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/three-myths-you-believe-about-great-fire-london

6
From at least 1743-1769, causes of death were given for all burials in the parish of St. Mary, Whitechapel, Middlesex, now in Tower Hamlets. A selection of causes on the first few pages below:

aged, asthma, black thrush, childbed, contagion of the brain, consumption, convulsions, dropsey, excess drink, fever, flux, french pox (syphilis), gout, hooping cough, horse shoe head (infants's disease), itch, lunatick, mortification (gangrene), overlaid (babies), pleurisy, rickets, scalded, smallpox, spotted fever, stoppage in st.(omach?), suddenly, tissick (lung disease/cough), teeth, thrush

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/1624/images/31280_194862-00000

this is a rather nice and also rare mid 17th century sketch of the medieval church also showing the windmill, horseriders, a coach, carts and pedestrians and the surrounding area
https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk/view-item?i=32161

a watercolour of the 1670s church from 1811 by John Coney
https://www.meisterdrucke.us/fine-art-prints/John-Coney/1149839/Church-of-St-Mary%2C-Whitechapel%2C-London%2C-1811.html

The church's up to date entry from the 'Survey of London' project on UCL blogs

https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/survey-of-london/2016/06/10/the-church-of-st-mary-matfelon-whitechapel-part-one/

https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/survey-of-london/2016/07/01/the-church-of-st-mary-matfelon-whitechapel-part-two/

The church was rebuilt in 1877, but was badly damaged by fire in 1880, and rebuilt again, but was finally destroyed completely in the London Blitz in 1940 and never rebuilt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_Matfelon

These contemporary books are useful in understanding more of what we knew (or thought we did :o) about disease back then

An Introduction to Physic and Surgery by R. Brookes M.D., London, 1754


https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/An_Introduction_to_Physic_and_Surgery/akFWAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP5&printsec=frontcover

A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences by a Society of Gentleman, London, 1763

Vol. I
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=khc7AAAAcAAJ&newbks=0&dq=%22a%20new%20and%20complete%20dictionary%20of%20arts%20and%20sciences%22&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Vol. II
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_New_and_Complete_Dictionary_of_Arts_an/j-wUAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA841&printsec=frontcover

Vol. III
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=chg7AAAAcAAJ&newbks=0&dq=%22a%20new%20and%20complete%20dictionary%20of%20arts%20and%20sciences%22&pg=PA1859#v=onepage&q&f=false

Vol. IV
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_New_and_Complete_Dictionary_of_Arts_an/5Yw9AAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA2693&printsec=frontcover

7
I think I posted before about the fact that when searching these, you should note that on the Bonds, they have usually transcribed the first male name at the top, the first name of which is in latin, instead of what they should have done, which is the couples' names, not in latin, which are in the centre of page ::), sometimes the bondsman is not the groom.
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/2056/

Unfortunately, now I have discovered that the problem on older allegations is much worse, as the practice of having someone else, usually a vicar, parish clerk, sexton etc. present the couple seems to have been much more common, and unfortunately in a majority of cases, this name seems to have been transcribed as the groom's name :o which probably means hundreds if not thousands of male entries are incorrect (both surname and first name), for example this page of allegations from September, 1685 there are four wrong entries

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/2056/images/32515_1831101883_0035-00084

The first entry is presented by William Smith of All Hallows, Barking, London, clarke, of the intended marriage of William Davis of St. Martin in the Fields, Middlesex, widower aged 48, and Mary Shipton of St. James in the Fields, widow aged 51. But the groom is transcribed as William Smith.

The second entry is presented by Ralph Wootton of St James Westminster, hackney coachman, of the intended marriage of Isaac Vardon of Chelsea, Middlesex, aged 30, and Margaret Leister of the same place, aged 30. Ralph's name is transcribed instead of Isaac.

Fourth entry, names are misread David Longward should be David Congnard, Jane Althans should be Jane Altham.

Fifth entry, James Hickes of St. Swithin, London, citizen and barber chirurgeon, presents the intended marriage of Robert Huckle of St. Peter Poer London, aged about 30, and Anne Hickes of St. Swithin, aged about 19. James is transcribed instead of Robert as the groom.

Sixth entry, Nicholas White, parish clerk of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, London presents the intended marriage of Robert Buttler of Epping, Essex, aged about 26, and Elizabeth Viner of Whitechapel, Middlesex, aged about 21. Nicolas is transcribed instead of Robert, and Elizabeth's name is mistranscribed as Piner.

So it seems it is best to search by bride's name only for these records. Unfortunately, this may not be possible, if you only have a surname from baptisms of a couple's childen :(. In which case, it might be worth searching out older indexes or transcripts, some of which may possibly have been published in historical or genealogical journals.

8
The Common Room / GRO showing zero results for EVERYTHING [SOLVED]
« on: Tuesday 16 January 24 10:16 GMT (UK)  »
Anyone else getting this?

9
The Common Room / Free Access to Fold3 / Forces War Records until 13th
« on: Thursday 09 November 23 11:21 GMT (UK)  »
In addition to records on Ancestry itself, there is (I think unusually) free access to Fold 3 (US) or Forces War Records (UK) until 13th for Remembrance Day which has some records you can only find there such as pension records, deserter records as well as US and Canada military records if that is of interest. You can use your Ancestry login details

https://uk.forceswarrecords.com/

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