Complete BMD Indexes Missing Pages ??

[DS]

Hello everyone (who has not already discovered this for themselves)

I have often seen it written that some pages are missing from the complete BMD indexes which are available free of charge on Ancestry. I do not think that this is necessarily so. I think that most pages are actually there but they are not linked correctly to the search criteria.

As an example I was looking for marriages of someone called Hopwood within a five year range. Most of the quarters appeared on the resultant list but it seemed as if the pages for two of the quarters within the range were missing, in accordance with the above allegation.

As an experiment I searched in each of those missing quarters for another name which could be on a previous page near to the one supposedly missing. I chose the name Hopkin and the quarter then appeared on the available listing. I then paged forward from there and found the Hopwood entry that I was looking for on the next page.

So the page was actually there but it did not appear on the list. I tried another couple of examples that had previously seemed to be missing and in both cases the method used in my experiment worked.

I thought I would let you know so that you could try it for yourselves if you need to, on the off chance that I am not the only one who had not thought of doing it before.

I hope it works for you too.

DS

[Koromo]

Hi

I think you've just been lucky that you haven't come across a dreaded white page yet.

For example, a surname of Stack, December quarter, 1923, comes up with the logo and navigation bar, and there is no image at all - the rest of the page remains white. Going forwards to the name I'm actually looking for takes me to page after page of the same whiteness. I would be most interested to know if others can/cannot see those pages.

However, I have found many 'missing' pages using the method you describe.  I think it is a bit unrealistic to expect that every page has survived the ravages of time - it's just frustrating because these particular pages appear in the index with the first and last names listed so they must exist somewhere.


Koromo

[DS]

Hi Koromo

Have just checked and found no problem at all with the name Stack in OND quarter 1923 for Births, Marriages or Deaths. It comes up for all three and paging forward is possible.

DS

[Koromo]

Hi DS

I'm sorry, I didn't say that it's in the Marriages that this problem occurs, and not only in 1923 - in quite a few years.

On the off-chance that I might understand what I was looking at, I've just checked the source code of pages which display properly and compared them to pages that don't display an image, and found what I think is an error. There seem to be javascript variables which control the height and width of the image and they are set at "0" on the 'white' pages. On the pages which work okay, those variables have "real" numbers set. eg. iw=2600, ih = 3236.

Obviously my implementation of Javascript does what it's told and sets the image size to "0" - other implementations must be more forgiving. I am on a Mac and have tried various browsers, and I know that some Windows users also get these blank pages.

Below is part of one of the 'white' pages. That tiny little blip at the bottom left is the image!! 

Thank you for offering to looking up any pages I can't see. There are rather too many of them, but I'll give a yell if I'm really desperate.    First I'll go and visit all my computer-owning friends!!

Koromo

[trish251]

Hi Koromo

I use windows - I came across one of those white pages on a census image & didn't understand at all what was happening - as the image started to load an image flashed by & then I got the white screen

Thanks for the information - now I may get my techo to advise me whether I would be able to read it or no!

Hi DS

Those pages usually appear to be missing (or appear in the wrong spot) because (most times) a name has been handwritten/inserted  on the bottom of the page & it has been transcribed as the last on the page when it probably is NOT the last on the page.

Another easy way to double check is to go directly to the year/quarter/start letter and binary search the pages to find the one you need.

I have been told by other roots chatters there are pages that are actually missing - not white & not mistranscribed - fortunately I haven't need one of these yet.

Trish

[Cell]

Hi,
I've come across many pages that are not there. They are mostly in the 1900's.
No amount of searching will bring them up as they are just not there.
 I tend to search through the indexes manually when I'm going through all the deaths ,marriages or births of some of the names that I'm researching (  not using the search box)-ie  I go to the year, click on that , then click on the initial so that I do not miss the person  that I'm looking for  in the indexes if the name has been misspelled.

For instance, over the weekend  I was scrolling quarter by quarter through all the deaths in the surnames beginning with a N .
I was looking for a death in the years of 1901 to 1930 for an August Neiman, Nieman, Neuman: hence why I was doing it manually and looking through all the N's  because his name gets spelled so many different ways (especially the second initial of the name).

 I can't remember which exact year it was that I came across that nearly all of the deaths were missing , but it is in one of the years inbetween 1900 and 1930 (Or it  may have been inbetween 1891 and 1901 . I was looking for two deaths over the weekend .I must have been in a happy mood )

The only deaths they have in one of the years are people with the surname beginning with an A.
 There are no other deaths  for any other surnames that don't begin with an A -the B's to Z's are completely missing for one of the years I came across between those above dates that I was searching through  .

 It's the same with  the marriages and births for various other initials  too in certain years in the 1900's. I've basically gone through, quarter by quarter through all the 1900's  for marriages and births( it took me months to do it ) for one of my own family lines that I'm researching ,and there are quite a number of years that are completely missing for many of the initials in some years.

They are definitely not complete for the 1900's. All the ones that I have come across that are completely missing  for  the births and marriages are in various years throughout the 1900's. I don't think I've come across many before 1900, except for the odd blank page, so I think that they are pretty much near complete before the 1900's.

Kind Regards

[DS]

Hello Cell,

Can I ask a favour of you?

Will you please specify just one or two quarters (or even years) where you encountered the "missing pages" situation? With any luck your search check sheets from the weekend may still be lying around somewhere and have the details on?

DS

[Cell]

Hi,
 No I don't have my notes, so I've began to go through all the years that I went through on the weekend to find it again
 At the moment  I'm up to 1905 and I still haven't found the missing one (it was just one of the quarters in one of the years before 1930). I seem to recall it was in the very early 1900's so it's odd why I haven't found it yet.
 I swear the powers above read these threads and upload the missing ones - it was 100% definitely before 1930 as I only went up to that year looking for the death.

Interestingly (well it is to me lol), I do have my old notes that I did months ago when I went through all the marriages and births in the 1900's  (  it was for one of my own lines that I've been researching , so I keep all notes on them unlike the above deaths I was looking for over the weekend- I wasn't as well organised to keep my scribbled notes on those deaths).

 For the marriages that were missing a few  months ago -  the 1920's were the worst  of all the years . An example:
(These may be just the initial Q that were missing . I didn't take note of all the initials that were missing at the time as I was just looking for Q birth's and Marriages):

 1925 4th quarter missing, 1927, 3 quarters were missing, only  the Jan quarter was there. 1928 Jan quarter missing.1937 Jan quarter missing

. I've just gone through all those that I noted  that were completely  missing a few months ago  (The above were totally missing as I noted the images that didn't upload as "error", and the quarters that they did not have at all as "missing") - Those above missing  marriages are now there, so It looks as if Ancestry has been working on their BMD's over  the past couple of months and uploading the missing quarters.

I also went through many of the years for the deaths  a few months ago too (the Q's)  - 1912 4th quarter was missing (it's now there ), and 1915 1st quarter was missing ( that's now there too)

Back to the deaths that  I found was missing over the weekend; There was definitely one quarter in one of the years  before  the year of 1930 that only had deaths for the initial A (I can even remember the only initial  that was there!) . I'll be blowed if I can find it now .

 I'll carry on re tracking through them all bit by bit in my spare moments. It's driving me crazy- it was most definitely missing, or ancestry have just uploaded the missing quarter to  make me question my own sanity - do they read these threads? grrrr!!!!!

Kind Regards

[Cell]

Right, I've just been through them all again right up to 1930 - phew! 
 All  the quarters for all initials   in-between 1881 ( I actually went from 1881 and not 1891 as I previously mentioned - that was a typing error by myself) and 1930 are there for each year.

 I'm not going barmy by the way! lol - Most defintely one of the quarters in one of the years between 1881 and 1930 had only the  A's ,and I seem to recall it was in the very early 1900's sometime  . The B to Z's were completely missing  for one of those quarters .

 I beginning to think  now that either ancestry was messing around with their BMD's at the weekend when I was looking through the deaths - i.e. for some reason they had taken the B to Z's off one of the quarters on the weekend  and have now put them back up again, or they have realised the quarter was missing and have  uploaded the missing quarter since last weekend.
Next time I'll be sure to file all notes when I find that any quarter is missing

Kind regards