Does anybody have a copy of this book?

[MaryA]

A Comedy of Errors, or, The Marriage Records of England and Wales, 1837-1899

I've heard great things about it and would love to borrow one to read, but it isn't in the library catalogue and Amazon's sellers want upwards of £35 for it.

[dickiesam]

The Marriage Records of England and Wales by Michael Whitfield Foster
ISBN - 0473055813

Try some of the bigger libraries...
See: http://www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.u ... errors.htm
And: http://www.centralhighlandslibraries.or ... L-S&ps=300

And, with the air fare... http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/532332

[MaryA]

I think I might pass on the one in Australia but it might be worth seeing if I can get an inter-library loan from one of the others, thanks.

[golflimatango]

Mary,

I traced a reference copy to Maghull Library a couple of years ago. Sefton Libraries online catalogue actually lists three reference copies but when I made enquiries I found that the copy listed for Crosby was lost and Southport could not find theirs either!

Being a reference copy I did not have the chance to take it away from the library and I only had an hour or so to peruse the contents so I did not take any notes. Suffice it to say that the general gist of the book was that the process which led to the compilation of the GRO indexes was utterly ill-conceived and lent itself to all kinds of errors. Large sections of the book are quite tedious statistics derived from detailed samples the author took when he was permitted access to the source material. These statistics don't make easy reading but were probably necessary to prove that the inherent potential for errors had indeed manifested itself in incorrect, missing and duplicated entries on quite a large scale. The problems are inherent in a system that relied on quarterly returns being transcribed from original records by all sorts of people (vicars, registrars, rabbis etc.) and then transcribed again at the GRO into the indexes. Even if everybody had been fastidious in submitting their quarterly returns correctly, there would still have been an inherent problem in copying from copies.

I was left with the conclusion that the indexes are quite badly flawed and because of the way they were compiled it would be impractical for them to be checked or rectified. The heightened interest in genealogical research and the demands this would place on the GRO were obviously not anticipated when the system was devised. The proper solution would be to create a new database from source records themselves but there does not seem to be either the will or the finance to do this.

The author wrote a follow up article that can be found here: http://globalgenealogy.com/globalgazett ... azfd38.htm

[MaryA]

Thank you Gareth, I've been aware of this book and what the gist of it covered for quite a number of years but only recently decided it would be interesting to see some of the coverage. I wouldn't want to get bogged down in the numerous statistics that I realise he must have compiled to back up his research, but it's more curiosity, so I'll get in touch with Maghull and see if by any chance they still have their copy.

Mind you having briefly looked at that link you have given, that might suffice to satisfy my curiosity