1861 census transcription

[Top-of-the-hill]

   I found an entry for Ambrose Pay in an asylum in Yorkshire, and as I am suspicious of any Pays north of London, I did some checking. I am pretty sure he appears in 1851 as Ambrose Gray. Below are the 1851 entry for him and an entry from a previous page for comparison. Is there any point in me sending in an error correction?

[Gadget]

It does look like Ambrose Gray - cf George Gregg in your second snip.

Gadget

[Andrew Tarr]

I agree - not a P at all.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  Thanks both - I will send the correction in. Some years ago I went through the 1851 checking any Pay entries North of Watford, (not that many) and they were almost all incorrect.

[arthurk]

I'm not convinced it is Gray in the clip you posted. The 'Gr' of Gregg is much wider, with a clear double-bend in the 'G', also seen in George. Before sending in a correction I'd want to look for letters that couldn't be anything but 'P' (eg Peter, Portsmouth), but also maybe 'F'. It's not the usual way to do an upper case 'F', but Fray is also a surname.

[AlanBoyd]

Ancestry has an admissions record in UK, Lunacy Patients Admission records… for Ambrose Gray on 24 August 1860 NE York., died 25 Jan 1864. There is a corresponding death record in Q1 at York.

[Andrew Tarr]

I'm not convinced it is Gray in the clip you posted. The 'Gr' of Gregg is much wider, with a clear double-bend in the 'G', also seen in George.

We may be assuming the two samples came from the same writer.  They aren't identical, but pretty similar, and neither should be interpreted as a P.

For years I had a similar problem finding an ancestor, eventually discovering that Tarr was indexed as Parr; in the original script the two characters were almost indistinguishable.  I have also had Tydeman indexed as Lydeman - only found by searching for first-name !

[arthurk]

I'm not convinced it is Gray in the clip you posted. The 'Gr' of Gregg is much wider, with a clear double-bend in the 'G', also seen in George.

We may be assuming the two samples came from the same writer.  They aren't identical, but pretty similar, and neither should be interpreted as a P.

By referring to "an entry from a previous page for comparison" the question did seem to imply that the same person wrote both extracts - otherwise what would be the point of comparing them?

Taken on its own, I can accept that the one that's of interest (Pay/Gray/Fray/whatever) could be read as Gray, but for me the very different 'G' in George Gregg calls that into question. Maybe as well as (or instead of) looking for other examples of 'P' it would be a good idea to see how many different ways the writer did a 'G' (or 'Gr').