Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 88

Clerical errors. The General Registration indexes were compiled by the registrar general’s clerks from copies of certificates sent in by the superintendent registrars, who in turn were receiving information from the local registrars: at each stage of the process, errors could and did creep in. If you receive a certificate that does not say exactly what you expected, this may be due to a clerical error somewhere along the line, although you would be most unwise to assume this was the case without good evidence.

Human errors. Equally, while the GRO staff do a splendid job, they are not all highly trained and can be prone to human error. If a search you requested from the Registrar General’s office comes back negative, the entry may simply have been missed. Also, although some certificates are photocopied from the original Registrar General’s copy, many more are copied out or typed and may thus contain mistranscriptions. This is seldom a problem, but it is always worth bearing the possibility in mind. If you think a certificate contains a transcription error, send it back and ask for it to be checked.

Misreading of information. Another source of trouble is that the General Registration indexes themselves contain errors. One reason for not finding what you wanted may be that a surname was misread, and thus misindexed. Write down the surname you are searching for in the worst handwriting you can manage, and then ask someone else to try to read it. If they suggest a different name, try searching under that one instead.