Interesting error? in the GRO index?

[Mitch in Notts]

Marriages Q1 1839 Oundle vol 15 page 369 contains:

EDIS William
HOWE William
IRELAND Henry
JOYCE Mary
SCOTNEY Lucy
SMITH Elizabeth

These marriages took place at Oundle Parish Church according to the Marriage Locator Website.
This is confirmed by the Parish Register that shows 3 marriages in Quarter One.

29th January 1839 William EDIS & Mary JOYCE.
17th February William HOWE & Elizabeth RIPPINER.
24th February 1839 Henry IRELAND & Elizabeth SMITH.

So there is a discrepancy. On the Marriage of William HOWE & Elizabeth RIPPINER the signatures are for George HOWE & Lucy SCOTNEY(who actually married in Q4 of 1839 elsewhere). The witnesses to the Marriage are William HOWE & Elizabeth RIPPINER. Presumably the parties all signed in the wrong place!
I have never come across this error before, and as a minimum would have expected both George HOWE & Elizabeth RIPPINER to have been indexed as well as William and Lucy!

Interesting!

[Pam Downes]

Normally I would have agreed with you, Mitch, because I've seen instances where the vicar has spelt a name one way and either the bride or groom has spelt in differently when signing and both variations have appeared in the GRO Index.

However, in this case, the BTs (also available to view on Ancestry) which use the 'old-style' register, clearly have the bridge and groom signing in the correct place. I therefore presume that the vicar sent a covering note to the local Registrar stating the equivalent of 'sorry, mate, made a bit of a boo-boo, but the correct signatories are....', and the local Registrar might even have forwarded the note to the GRO.

It might also depend on where the actual indexing took place. Did the local Registrar's office compile the index, which the GRO just copied in blind faith, or did the GRO compile the index after looking at every certificate that went to their office? I rather think it was the former because otherwise a marriage certificate which is clearly not signed and says 'This marriage was stopped immediately before celebration by a bystander the parties wishing to be married being within the prohibited degrees' would not appear in the GRO Index. (Ann Nash and Joseph Nash, June quarter 1851, Boston registration disrict.)

Pam

[Mitch in Notts]

I think one of the most interesting points is that anyone looking for the whereabouts of Elizabeth RIPPINER after 1839 would have been defeated, as her name fails to show in the GRO Marriage Index, so until the BTs were indexed she would have for all research purposes have vanished!

[Pam Downes]

Have you put some Post-ems correcting the errors against the entries on FreeBMD?

[Mitch in Notts]

I have done Pam.