Found a marriage ... but I haven't!

[Mythology]

Assuming that the LDS info is correct, it ought to be the marriage register not the banns register because they said "Parish records from St Mary's, and includes: Marriages 1858-1860."

Marriage registers wholly in that period:
1858 September - 1859 April
1859 April - 1859 November
1859 November - 1860 June
so those three combined make an 1858-1860 batch, possibly with 1860 June - 1860 December too, I haven't checked the start and finish dates of the LDS batch.

Banns register: 1858 September - 1861 June, so doesn't fit the 1858-1860 description.

[Mythology]

As to why it's not in any other database, that's because .... errr .... well, there isn't really any other actual database.

Everything except the parish register entries on the IGI is derived from the same thing - the GRO index. FreeBMD is a partial transcript of the GRO index, turned into a handy searchable database, but if it isn't listed in the GRO index in the first place, it isn't going to turn up on FreeBMD either - their transcribers don't have special privileged access to extra info from locally held records that we mere mortals can't find online, they just have the same set of index images that we can look at to work from. And the Ancestry version is just a revamped version of FreeBMD.

[Mythology]

It is fairly well known that the GRO index is a complete shambles - books have been written about it. Add in the generally unhelpful attitude of London Register Offices (no, not you, Lambeth - you've just been awarded a couple of stars) and when it comes to missing entries in the index, life is not easy!

In many parts of the country, not only do we find that local offices are more willing to investigate, but there are alternatives to look at - databases created from the locally held copies, probably less liable to errors and omissions. I make a fair bit of use of the Cambridgeshire one, have used the Cheshire and West Midlands ones too, so there are three that I can think of off the top of my head - but there's nothing like that for London.

[Mythology]

London often suffers in this respect, because of the sheer size of it. Let's take the nearest census year to your 1859 marriage, the 1861 census, and look at some population figures. We'll take England and Wales, as that's what the GRO index covers, rather than the UK as a whole:
England and Wales - 20,066,224
Towns with a population over 200,000:
Leeds 207,165
Birmingham 296,076
Manchester 357,979
Liverpool 443,938 and ...
London 2,803,989
that's over twice the number of the next four biggest places added together, roughly 14% of the population, nearly 1 in 7, living in London.
A massive indexing task for local records - are we really surprised that nobody's taken it on?

[Mythology]

While being fairly philosophical about the failings of an index that is known to be incomplete and full of clerical errors, like Peter, I'm intrigued as to actually what goes on here.

Obviously, if it's St Mary, Lambeth, then my "number of independent chapels tacked on at the end and lost / not indexed / dropped on the floor and muddled" theory goes out of the window, but ...

As part of my digging, just sticking to those three Sundays, 27 February, 6 March and 13 March, there were thirty-one marriages listed by the LDS which I could not find in the GRO index - that's a heck of a lot missing on just three days!

[Mythology]

27 Feb James Bateley & Mary Ann Grofsmith (Grossmith?)
27 Feb Edward Boulton & Hannah Brooks
27 Feb Daniel Brant & Ann Tucker
27 Feb Stephen Cuthbert & Maria Hall
27 Feb John James Elwell & Mary Ann Mann
27 Feb Herbert Thomas Handley & Catherine Rosewell
27 Feb Joseph James Jameson & Elizabeth Hart
27 Feb John Shearlock & Hannah Fewkes
27 Feb George Windover & Hannah Watson

[Mythology]

06 Mar Thomas Clarke & Emily Frances Robinson
06 Mar George Cull & Elizabeth Charnock
06 Mar Robert Dadd & Emma Wright
06 Mar Henry Davies & Sarah Eliza Chapple
06 Mar Robert Foster & Eliza Reeve
06 Mar David Green & Ellen Pegg
06 Mar John Hewitt & Amy Brown
06 Mar George Charles Hooper & Jane Dunn
06 Mar Alfred Colin Parker & Sarah Wilkinson
06 Mar John Edward Percival & Eliza Phoebe Jones
06 Mar George Seal & Mary Richardson
06 Mar Clare Bly Woolsey & Julia Cood

[Mythology]

13 Mar John Appleby & Susan Wigzell
13 Mar John Brennan & Ellen Coghlan
13 Mar George William Canham & Mary Chalmack
13 Mar Henry Power Clark & Maria Bushnell
13 Mar Thomas Condie & Jane Strutton
13 Mar George Henderson & Margaret Emma Pearce Smith
13 Mar Charles Piper & Ann Adelaide Ayres
13 Mar John Scott & Ann Bilbrough
13 Mar Richard Tunnicliff & Aann (Ann, Anna?) Dixon
13 Mar Henry Winsper & Mary Ann Skellington

And possibly also missing is
27 Feb Edward Reeves Player & Emma Buckle
though, as the whole thing appears to be a mess anyway, I suspect that a plain Edward Player with Emma Buckle as one of the matches is that one rather than a coincidence of names, even though the page number (321) is way out of the range and the other two people listed with this reference are not in this IGI batch.

[Elly]

Of the 31 that you list for those three dates, I find (at random) that three (and a half) are in the GRO under Jun Qtr 1859 instead of Mar Qtr:

27 Feb John James Elwell & Mary Ann Mann
06 Mar George Seal & Mary Richardson
06 Mar David Green & Ellen Pegg
13 Mar John Appleby ...

Did someone just index a bundle of late quarterly returns?

Elly

[Elly]

I have found most of these marriages in the GRO, but unfortunately not yet the marriage you actually need. Given the evidence so far, I would say the chances are that the marriage you want is going to be in the PR for the date given in the IGI.

If the IGI dates are correct, these GRO entries are all indexing cockups of one sort or another. The vast majority have been indexed as Jun Qtr instead of Mar Qtr. This may be due to the late submission of quarterly returns by the clergy, or the loss (and subsequent retrieval) of a bundle of same by the GRO after the Mar Qtr had been indexed.

This Jun Qtr 1859 of the GRO index is in a very poor state anyway -- handwritten, with doubtful spelling and plenty of unreadable page numbers, which of course means that spouses are not properly matched. So it's not surprising some surnames have been missed or mistranscribed by FreeBMD and other projects.

Mike Foster would have a field-day!

I will copy the list in a separate message below, with the index refs as found (hope this works).

Elly