When I've Finished This ...

You know how it is when you're doing something repetitive.  You wonder if perhaps there might be a better way of doing it, that would save time or effort ... or both and, depending on the circumstances, possibly a whole lot of money, too!  I found myself in just such a situation some years ago, tried doing it a different way and realised that this wasn't the first time that week I'd changed the way I was doing that job and improved the technique.  Realising that this particular task, once finished, was unlikely to recur, I coined this mantra: "By the time I've finished this job, I'll have refined to the utmost a skill that I'll never need again."

Once it was into my head, I was astonished just how often this proved to be true.  I found the need to change a series of Excel graphs, for example, and the process for doing the first two or three seemed a bit long-winded until I hit on a better way; then in a while I realised that if I did step B before step A, there would be no need to do step C ... and so on, until the last two followed the perfect routine.  I no longer use those graphs at all, so the need will never arise again.

The latest, and very simple example of this truism came this week.  Some months ago, I attended a jumble sale where much of the stuff available was, quite frankly, rubbish ... at least it was according to my standards of never buying anything for which it would be difficult in my small flat to find a home.  And yet, I wanted to support the cause for which the jumble sale was being held.  Finally, I spotted a little set of photo frames and 'snapped them up' <groan>.  I found them a 'home', sitting on the top of a bookcase, in a neat little heap, waiting for the right pictures to come along to fill them.

Such an opportunity arose this week and, as I selected the pictures, copied and printed them, cut out the prints and finally disassembled the frames and mounted the pictures inside, I realised that, although there were only four of them, I'd used three different methods of carrying out each step, and only the last two were done the 'best' way.  If ever I need to display multiple pictures again ... (you know the rest!)

Nearly four years ago, in my family history studies, I devised a check-list to make sure that all the various records that I keep had been completed.  The form itself has passed through a number of variations, reaching what - for the present, at least - is the most useful document for the purpose.  This week I've spent some while modifying some of the pages of the 'coffee-table' book that is the ultimate presentation of the results of my ongoing research.  In some cases it was literally as small a detail as the format of marriage dates, so that they all look the same: dd.mm.yyyy.  In other cases, there was a glaring error to be corrected or missing dates that ought to be available on line via one record set or another.

Some of these corrections would have been eliminated at the outset had I at that time been using the check-list developed more recently.  In some cases, such as the one I'm about to describe, more information has become available since the error was made.  This particular sixth cousin is the daughter of a lady who bore the distinctive forenames 'Alice Octavia'.  Alice was the youngest of a family of eight (as you might guess from her second name).  In 1901, her family appears in as correct a form as possible: father, mother, two sons and five daughters, listed in sequence, with Alice as the last one.

With that name, Octavia, she had to be the eighth child, though.  Usually in these circumstances, my next step would be to look at the 1911 census, where the so-called 'fertility' questions would provide the precise boundaries for the research.  In this instance this facility was denied me, however, since the mother of these children died in 1903.  (This resource isn't always as helpful as it might seem, either.  I was looking at one family recently, where the woman claimed to have had twelve children, of whom seven were still living.  Apart from the seven living ones, I was able to trace only one who had been born and died between censuses, and therefore had qualified for no other mention.)

At the time of my original research, I had found one instance of a birth and death in the same quarter, and had included this child as the eighth one I had been looking for.  As I now looked at the page with fresh eyes, though, I was suspicious.  My cousin had provided me with the precise birth dates of her mother and the six aunts and uncles she knew.  Her mother was born in November 1900, and her youngest aunt in July 1898.  The birth of the infant I'd found, who had died in the same quarter as she was born, had also been registered in the September quarter of 1898.  Although there was no note to that effect, I now assume that I had previously thought of these two as twins, one of whom had died, and the other survived.

I felt I ought to check.  If this were the case, then their birth registrations would be either identical, or would differ by one, if one child were the last entry on one page and the other the first entry on the next page.  In this case, Alice's known sister was registered with the number 974; the infant who died appeared under the reference 970 ... unlikely if they were twins.  Since that initial research, the Registration Office has released a new facility, where the mother's maiden name of each birth registration can be looked up on line.  This makes research of this nature much simpler.  I checked all seven of the 'known' children and found that the name applied to each registration was Bailey, confirming the family link.  The name for the child under reference 970 was ... Parsons.  She was clearly not the girl - or boy - I sought.

Next, I checked each year around the times these known children were born, right back to the time of their parents' marriage (and a little before 'just in case'), both in the Suffolk area where the family were living and also where the marriage took place, which was in London, Miss Bailey having been born in Kent.  Eventually, I came up with just one additional birth with the mother's maiden name shown as Bailey, and a quick check revealed that she, too, had died within weeks of her birth, and so missed any census record.  Annie, born and died 1898, was quickly changed to Mary Jane, born and died 1890, and I noted with some satisfaction that this infant had also been given two forenames as had all of her siblings, except for two who had enjoyed the luxury of three! 

Of these, one - the firstborn of the eight - had his own distinctive name, George, to which had been appended both of his father's, Allen James, while the daughter born in the jubilee year of 1897 was called by the names of three generations of royalty, Victoria Alexandra May, these last two being the spouses of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) and the Duke of York (later George V).

This improved technique, at least, is one I'm sure I shall be using again ... and again!