Reading the Writing

Many of the indexes being transcribed by FreeBMD from the earlier years are handwritten. Whilst these indexes present special challenges to the transcriber, and take a little more effort than the typed versions, they do represent the original index, and offer greater accuracy than typed indexes.

This page seeks to offer advice on how to read the seemingly unreadable. The FreeBMD Project Team are grateful to the John Slann Institute of Transcribing for permission to reproduce parts of this material.

Aids to Transcribers

A file containing

Districts sorted by Volume lists

Surnames list

can be obtained from here The lists are downloaded as a zipped file, about 1 Mb. The unzipped files are in text format and can be opened using a word-processor such as Word or Notepad.

19th century writing

The pens used in the 19th Century were dip pens which had nibs shaped like a small chisel. There was a small reservoir and ink travelled from the reservoir to the tip of the nib by a split in the nib. Pressing hard on the pen caused the split to separate and a broader line was drawn. The pen was normally held with the wide part of the nib in a North-East to South-West orientation, more easily shown as

North-West to South East Pen Strokes North-East to South-West

Any line drawn from North-West to South-East would be broad
Any line drawn from North-East to South-West would be thin
The pen could be moved with ease from North-East to South-West and vice versa
The pen could only be moved with ease from North-West to South-East
Movement from South-East to North-West was awkward

This explains why a character varies in thickness and there are variances from character to character

How the scans came about

The pages of the index were photographed and for many years the fiches produced from the negatives have been used by genealogists. It is the digital scanning of these films that we are transcribing. On some of the scans parts of letters are missing due to the film and scanning process, similar to when photocopying a handwritten page. This effect tends to be consistent and the bits missing are usually the thin bits of the characters.

Handwriting Styles

The handwriting varies slightly with different clerks who prepared the indexes. It seems that each clerk did a run of consecutive pages so it is possible to get used to the individual styles.

In the example below;

We can see the way that 7 and 9 both had long legs.
Sometimes the long leg interferes with the number below.
What it doesn't show are the thick and thin lines!

Example

In the example below;

the Surname is THEWLISS.

It looks like THEWLIFS but this is the old fashioned way of writing double S.

The first S descends down to nearly hit the N but is barely visible.

In the same example notice the exaggerated X in THEXTON this is typical.

In THEXTON the thin part of the E is missing.

Example

In this example;

There is Ross showing the fs for ss
In Bath the entering stroke for the t is above the baseline, this is normal. The entering stroke is lower for an l(L)
Thomas St showing a superscripted t

example

Deciphering Difficult Scans

The combination of a florid style, odd letter formation and poor reproduction can make reading some images difficult.

The next 5 examples are from a difficult scan. We will look at four from the top, pretty unreadable, and one from the bottom, readable.

The bottom part first

The Indexer appears to be holding the pen in a slightly more East-West fashion
They are pressing harder on the down-strokes and very lightly on the up-strokes
The up-strokes have largely been lost on the scan, especially noticable in the W of Wolverhampton and the M of Marylebone
But the Volume numbers are clear and may give us a clue
The 2 central districts are Dudley with the flourishes of the D missing

Example

Now the very difficult top parts of the scan. We have to break down our detective work into manageable chunks and use some of the tools mentioned at the top of this web page. We have 2 unreadable Districts in each of the four examples:

The first example

The first district

There is a possible ham at the end with maybe 3 letters before
A very clear XX in the Volume column
Look at the Districts sorted by Volume list, section XX, for a District ending in ham
Oldham sticks out
On the scan the ldham portion is now clear, but what about the O?
The O has been formed starting at the top in a clockwise way, the left side is a firm down-stroke and the right side is a light up-stroke (missing)

Example

The second district

The last letter could be d, l or t
A cental letter with a descender
A clearish XX in the Volume column
From the Districts sorted by Volume list, Salford fits
To be convinced this was Salford we need to compare some other characters in the same scan
From Oldham it can be seen there are weak tops to the Ls
Now look for another S somewhere else on the same scan, maybe a Sarah

The second example

The first district

There is a horrible LEIGH. There is little difference between the capital letters L and S

The second district

In Preston, the loop of the P is rarely seen

Example

The third example

The first district

Another example of Oldham

The second district

Compare the first letter with Preston
Volume is XXV
When you locate Penrith in the Districts by Volume list it becomes obvious and helps confirm the Preston

Example

The fourth example

The first district

Another example of Oldham showing the weak right side of the O

The second district

Bolton is easy now
Another short L

Example

A final word of caution

In the examples above, we have seen how it is possible to use all the information at our disposal to discover what an apparently unreadable entry says. Notice, however, that in each case, having used clues to gain an idea of what an entry might be, we go back and test whether the entry really does correspond to our theory. If it doesn't, then no matter how convinced we are that the entry must say that, we don't make the assumption.

In this respect, the transcriber should place himself in the place of a detective. He may be sure in his own mind of the culprit, but unless he can prove it beyond doubt, he cannot proceed.

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