Name of Witness?

[Sue Mackay]

Would someone who has access to the LMA registers on Ancestry please take a look at the marriage of Robert PERRY to Elizabeth BOOTH in St.Botolph's Aldgate on 29 March 1807? The vicar has clearly written PERRY but I am hoping that this is actually the first marriage of Robert PIRIE, one of the 1820 settlers to the Cape. The signature (to me) clearly says PIRIE, with a dot over the i, followed by an e, and more importantly the signature is a good match for the one on letters known to have been written by Robt. PIRIE. However, I am struggling a bit to read the Christian name of the first BOOTH witness. Is it Peter? The final letter looks more like a supercript n but I can't immediately think of a name to match

[Sue Mackay]

Am now wondering if it could br Ben'n ie Benjamin?

[Kerrywood]

On balance, I'd go with Peter.

[Pam Downes]

Think I would have to go with Peter, too. I did wonder if it might have been Robert written in the short form of Robt, but the shape of the letters are all wrong for that.
As for the groom's surname - the last four letters are definitely 'irie'. If you look very closely you can see a dot above the first i just on the outside curve of the P.
Pam

[Sue Mackay]

Thanks. Think I've got the right marriage, as the daughter was baptised a year later. The first marriage for Robert that had been 'lodged' on various trees in SA was one that took place in 1801, when he would have been extremely young, and the signatures didn't match up at all.

[junedye64]

I can see it could be Peter but my first thought was Ruth.

Signature definitiley Pirie

June

[lesleys]

not that it helps with the first witness but could Mabel Booth be the Mabel Barry who m Henry Booth 7 May 1798 at St George in the East - signature looks similar.

There was a Benjamin Booth married at St Botolph in 1804 but he signed with his full name.
There was also, in 1799 a John Booth marriage - to Bohanna Turner, and a few earlier ones, but nothing that looks like that signature. The only Peter Booth marriages have signatures that are very obviously Peter.
A puzzle indeed!