Scotlandspeople deaths

[kylejustin]

I'm getting rather annoyed with scotlandspeople and the way they lay out the death indexes.....

they have taken to putting women down under their married and maiden names, with no cross referencing. I don't remember them doing this a few years ago, so unsure when it started?

i've been trying to find siblings of emmigrant ancestors, all born before records exist. I put in surnames with mother's maiden name for the uncles, and found a few i didn't know about that way.

but when it comes to trying to find aunts, my curiosity costs me a fortune with nil return. For example looked at deaths for a married margaret/peggy mcinnes and found one that fit but her maiden name was mcinnes and her married name beaton. I even found an ancient lady in the index under mclachlan, right lady i needed but turned out to be incorrect, registered as mckinley, her maiden name. She shows up under mclachlan, smith and mckinley.

most of the time, the women are recorded on the death certs by their married name, despite the tradition women keeping maiden names in scotland.

why can't they have arranged it like their burials? The index records spouses name where known.

you have no idea whether the record is for a married, single or widowed woman. Very frustrating.

[GallowayLass]

Women don’t “keep” their maiden surnames in Scotland in the same sense that they do in USA and parts of Europe where for example Alice Wright marries a Mr. Johnston and then becomes known as Alice Wright Johnston.
The way we work is that in official documents a married (or divorced) woman is always indexed under her own maiden surname and any other surname by which she has been known. If a woman were to be interviewed by the police or end up in court she is referred to by all of her surnames
in documentation.
SP online indexes have never had cross references. You can put her maiden surname in the “other” name box below surname and hope to get a match. If that doesn’t work, the only other way to find out any unknown surnames is to find the death index for her under her married surname.
Take a note of the year, county, reg. district and the cert number. Then search again but this time leave out the surname and enter only the forename(s) from your original search, plus the exact year, the county and reg. district and click search.
This time you can easily spot any matching certificate numbers. If you just find two matches then one is her maiden surname and one her married surname. If you find more, then there were other marriages you may not have been aware of.
As ever though, the info on certificates depends on the knowledge of the informant and their honesty.

SP are gradually adding mother’s maiden surname to online death indexes. Late 1970’s onwards have it and some of the early ones. There’s a great chunk still to do and I think they are doing it small sections at a time. Even when it’s finished though there will be certificates where an mms search won’t work because that info is not on the certificate. I had an awful bother finding a woman’s death. I had it narrowed down to two and asked SP for help saying I wanted the one whose mms was G. They ruled out one as the mms was wrong and the other one had no parents listed at all!! I asked was she married to Mr Q T and bingo, it was her. She had died in an asylum and the informant was a ward nurse who had no idea who her parents had been. I was lucky that she had known the husband’s forename.