FindMyPast Newsletter

[Colin Cruddace]

Excerpt from their latest newsletter.

Last month we asked you 'In which year was William Plymouth baptised in Holbeton, Devon?' It turns out that this record had been incorrectly transcribed and William's last name is actually Fetball – sorry William! We've corrected this but it meant that you couldn't find the correct answer – apologies for the confusion

Can anyone explain, preferably from FindMyPast  , how Fetball was transcribed as Plymouth, and why they didn't include a copy of the entry to show how the mistake was possible.

My assumption is that their records are completely unreliable 

Colin

[Billyblue]

One would wonder how Fetball could become Plymouth.

However, one answer may be that the transcriber looked along the line and read the wrong line.
This is easily done if records are spread across a page, I can assure you.

Of course, if they had two people transcribing the same record, then compared them, this sort of mistake would show up (unless they both made the same mistake!!)

       

Dawn M

[andycand]

Hi Colin

That is a very harsh statement to make, I'm not an FindMyPast subscriber but the free search shows that Plymouth was the place rather than the surname and the transcriber simply made a mistake possibly by entering Plymouth as both Surname and Place.

I doubt whether any person, no matter how good they are, has never made a silly mistake when transcribing.

I will however say that it is embarrassing for FindMyPast.

Andy

[Colin Cruddace]

Hi Colin

That is a very harsh statement to make, I'm not an FindMyPast subscriber but the free search shows that Plymouth was the place rather than the surname and the transcriber simply made a mistake possibly by entering Plymouth as both Surname and Place.

I doubt whether any person, no matter how good they are, has never made a silly mistake when transcribing.

I will however say that it is embarrassing for FindMyPast.

Andy

My apologies if I appeared to make a statement that was my own, I was merely passing on an observation. As a past transcriber for FreeBMD and FreeCen I know how easy it is to mistranscribe names but I would have thought that FindMyPast would have considered that and make sure that their question was correct, and not show their infallibility.

Colin