In message <[email protected]>, Ian Goddard <[email protected]> writes: >On 12/12/14 22:11, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: >> In message <[email protected]>, Guy >> Etchells via <[email protected]> writes: >> [] >>> It is only when the researcher realises that virtually all parish >>> entries of baptisms and burials are transcripts, for example, that he >>> or she can understand that errors can and do appear in the registers. >> >> Would you care to expand on that? What exactly do you mean by "parish >> entries", and if they are transcripts, from what have they been >> transcribed? > >Written up from notes. I've certainly come across cases where the I suppose that's inevitable, if one thinks about it. >baptism & burial several days later are written up in a single entry so >clearly the writing up of the baptism and subsequent events didn't >happen until at least the occasion of the burial. Churches with Now you mention it, I've seen such too. >chapels of ease were another instance. There seems to have been a big >problem in getting the chaplains to send in their returns, at least in >the cases I'm familiar with. > >BTs seem to have been sent in at the end of the year which raises an >interesting question - were they transcribed from the PRs at year end, >written up during the year at the same time as the PRs or written up at >year end from the same notes as the PRs? There can be discrepancies >between BTs & PRs. > As Steven says, it probably varies widely. I've certainly seen a case where the BTs have been incorrectly copied - it was fairly clear that the PR came first in that case - but I could believe that more or less any combination we can think of (and some we can't!) exists somewhere/somewhen. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)[email protected]+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Solution: a more subtle problem