Poor law records from London & Middlesex

[PhotoFamily]

I've been browsing Ancestry's Poor Law records - what a wealth of information! It's not just admission & discharges to the workhouses - there are school records, where the children went after the school, information about fostering children, and more and more and more.

But it's inaccessible! There's no index beyond year and location.

Does anyone know if there are any plans for indexing the records? Even a volunteer effort? How can it be advocated &/or supported?

Also - does Ancestry's collection represent all surviving records? There are gaps.

[margaretmarch]

I expect you will need to ask Ancestry and may gather up some volunteers. They do have an advert asking for volunteers on the home page but I don't think they let you choose what you work on.
Margaret

[PhotoFamily]

I think I looked at that - no, they have specific projects, & these records were not amongst them.

[WendyPusey]

I transcribed some school records earlier in the year for Ancestry, but I don't know when they are going to be available.

Apparantly from the forum the records were completed 6 months ago, but no-one knows when Ancestry are going to make them available.

[PhotoFamily]

How frustrating that volunteer work isn't made available when it's completed . . .

I don't know if anyone else has looked at the school records: They name the student, give the student's age - and disposition when they were discharged from school. Often the disposition is of little use, but sometimes it indicates if the student went to America, joined the military, etc. Priceless to a genealogist.

There are foster children records that name the child, age - and their disposition when the leave foster care.

[Sue from Southend]

I, too, did some transcribing on the London Schools and eagerly await their release. But in Ancestry's defence there is a lot of work to be done with the transcriptions to index them and make them searchable - I'm sure that they'll be worth the wait!

There is a possibility that some London Settlement Papers will start to be transcribed soon - you'd need to check on the World Archives Project link to see if and when they start.

[JudithM]

In the mean time "inaccessible" is rather a harsh description. They are a whole lot more accessible online than when we had to travel to London to visit the LMA and search the books (though I must say I enjoy searching real books more than turning virtual pages) Of course an online index may turn up relatives who we didn't realise were in an institution but "informed browsing" has enabled me to find several of my rellies in these records.

[Sue from Southend]

I can remember on my first trip to the LMA that I blithely agreed to do a look up for someone on GR in the workhouse admittance and discharge papers with very vague details, lol! Needless to say I couldn't find what the contact needed and because I spent so long searching for her that I didn't do half of my own look ups!

Having the LMA records on Ancestry, indexed or not, has saved me huge amounts of time and money but I must admit that I agree with Judith that I miss handling old documents or even scrolling through microfilm in the company of fellow obsessives!

[PhotoFamily]

True, they are online. I don't have the fastest connection, though . . . And the family I'm looking for moved around a lot - I'm not even sure which records to be looking in.

I'd be happy to participate in an indexing project