Mythology
09-01-2006, 04:13 AM
Typing up some of my stuff has reminded me of this, and it could catch people out so I thought I'd give you all something to tear your hair out over. ;)
Baptisms for the Middlesex (East London) parish of St George in the East appear to be on the IGI from 1729 to 1840. They all have a "C" number, they are "extracted" entries, so there is no apparent problem at first sight bar the possibility of transcriber error, which can occur with any transcript.
Hugh Wallis's well-known web site, which lists the batches, and which you will probably look at as a quick check on coverage, has:
C055781 1729-1779
C055782 1779-1810
C055783 1810-1840
That is not the whole story though.
If you *found* your person on the IGI and clicked the source call number in the entry, you'd find that they are not taken from the register, they are taken from the baptism day books. The register was, of course, written up from these, not always faithfully, and if there's a discrepancy (as is the case with one of mine where the birth date differs) the day book is more likely to be correct, so that's a bonus.
On the other hand, if you did *not* find your person, you might reasonably assume that they weren't baptised there. Not having an entry to look at in the first place, you probably won't have investigated any further than the batch list.
So you will quite possibly not realise that the dates shown for the batches are only start and end dates, and there are large gaps - most notably, after 1812, there's nothing until 1829. For those years, you need the parish register, which is not on the IGI.
Have fun. :)
Baptisms for the Middlesex (East London) parish of St George in the East appear to be on the IGI from 1729 to 1840. They all have a "C" number, they are "extracted" entries, so there is no apparent problem at first sight bar the possibility of transcriber error, which can occur with any transcript.
Hugh Wallis's well-known web site, which lists the batches, and which you will probably look at as a quick check on coverage, has:
C055781 1729-1779
C055782 1779-1810
C055783 1810-1840
That is not the whole story though.
If you *found* your person on the IGI and clicked the source call number in the entry, you'd find that they are not taken from the register, they are taken from the baptism day books. The register was, of course, written up from these, not always faithfully, and if there's a discrepancy (as is the case with one of mine where the birth date differs) the day book is more likely to be correct, so that's a bonus.
On the other hand, if you did *not* find your person, you might reasonably assume that they weren't baptised there. Not having an entry to look at in the first place, you probably won't have investigated any further than the batch list.
So you will quite possibly not realise that the dates shown for the batches are only start and end dates, and there are large gaps - most notably, after 1812, there's nothing until 1829. For those years, you need the parish register, which is not on the IGI.
Have fun. :)