I've been reading about the GRO indexes again!
I know we often say entries sometimes don't reach the GRO, but here's something that causes far more problems than that :(
The films/fiche of the GRO index books have lots of missing pages!! Not all the film/fiche versions of the indexes are the same, but I've been checking apparently missing death entries against the FreeBMD transcriptions and many of the pages which are missing from at least one film version do not appear on FreeBMD.
If it's one page of handwritten index that's been missed then that might mean 40 names are missing from what is available to us via the GRO, but if it's two or three typed pages then the numbers are increased dramatically.
I was aware that some pages are missing when viewing Ancestry "Complete" Indexes, but didn't realise many of these pages are missing from all film versions of the GRO indexes and are not just an Ancestry error.
For Example: For death indexes 1853-1865 there's only about 10 quarters (out of 52) where there are no missing pages from the particular film checked.
So.........now the public doesn't have access to the actual index books, some entries may never be found if the only way to trace them is via the GRO (ie London entries etc)
And if you are reading this OC, do you have a Charles Shuttleworth Holden (poss b 1756 of Gawthorpe, Lancashire) on your tree?
I know we often say entries sometimes don't reach the GRO, but here's something that causes far more problems than that :(
The films/fiche of the GRO index books have lots of missing pages!! Not all the film/fiche versions of the indexes are the same, but I've been checking apparently missing death entries against the FreeBMD transcriptions and many of the pages which are missing from at least one film version do not appear on FreeBMD.
If it's one page of handwritten index that's been missed then that might mean 40 names are missing from what is available to us via the GRO, but if it's two or three typed pages then the numbers are increased dramatically.
I was aware that some pages are missing when viewing Ancestry "Complete" Indexes, but didn't realise many of these pages are missing from all film versions of the GRO indexes and are not just an Ancestry error.
For Example: For death indexes 1853-1865 there's only about 10 quarters (out of 52) where there are no missing pages from the particular film checked.
So.........now the public doesn't have access to the actual index books, some entries may never be found if the only way to trace them is via the GRO (ie London entries etc)
And if you are reading this OC, do you have a Charles Shuttleworth Holden (poss b 1756 of Gawthorpe, Lancashire) on your tree?
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