Some help deciphering please.....

[Val in Oz]

I have checked ancestry under burials for 1741 @ Christ Church Spitalfields and although the name is clearly written I wonder if some kind person could please help me with the rest of the details.

Anthony William Samain buried 17.11.1741

I'm not sure about the address - and does the letters at the end mean he was an infant?

Thankyou very much in anticipation

[Sabrina]

I would say it was Grey etc St - and looking at an entry higher on the page there is a Grey eagle St - so possibly the same.

The letter and number I would guess would be the grave location, not sure what the little swiggle means before the M though.

[kiterunner]

The address looks like Greyeed St which I would think is an abbreviation, I'll see if I can find out what for, and the letter is M which looks to mean Married since other entries on the page have W or C which presumably mean Widow/er and Child respectively.

[Val in Oz]

Gosh you were both quick replying - many thanks

OH is going to see if he can find Greyeed St - or similar on some old maps

I thought that the letters at the end might have been 'In' meaning an infant

[kiterunner]

There isn't anything like Greyeed St on the "Victorian London Streets" site, so maybe it is short for Grey Eagle St.

If you look at the entries for infants on that page they have a C for child.

[kiterunner]

D'oh, just realised it's a lot older than Victorian! Maybe there was a street with a name like that then!

[kiterunner]

Oh well, at least I've figured out what the squiggle after St is - it appears on all the entries that have St, so it must be a superscript r! i.e. it actually says Str, not St.

[Val in Oz]

Thankyou very much KR - we will keep looking for a street name that looks similar

Now I just wish I could find a baptism for him, but so far no luck

Many thanks though.

KR since you told me about that new Beta site new names keep popping up, it has proved invaluable.

[kiterunner]

Now I think it could be some kind of abbreviation for Grey eagle St. The bit at the end might not be a d - it could say Grey ee or Grey ea and then just have a curly bit at the end.

[Sabrina]

Yes, I just realised that too!

Thought you were right about the M, C, W abbreviation, but thought they might be man and woman, rather than widowed. Then I looked at page 110 and there is the letter D against male and female names, as well as W and M! What could that be?

[kiterunner]

Oh yes, if you look at the bottom of the right hand column on the right hand page there are some entries that more clearly say Grey ea Str - look at Hester Desvaux and Jonathan Willson. So it is short for Grey eagle street.

[kiterunner]

And yes, looks like you're right about the M and W, since all the men have an M and the women have a W! Sorry, I spotted a few widows with a W and jumped to the wrong conclusion! I'll have to think about the D's...

[Val in Oz]

Sabrina - are you sure the letters after aren't 'In"?

I would really like them to be as I can fit an infant in with one family very nicely...lol

[kiterunner]

Val, it's definitely an M because if you look at the entries that say "an infant..." they have a C after them.

[kiterunner]

Also if you look at the beginning of the book before they started using the letters, it says Man, Wo or Chi at the end of each entry. But I still haven't worked out what a D means!

[Val in Oz]

Thankyou for that - I am most grateful for all the help you've given.

[Olde Crone]

D = Dissenter???

OC

[kiterunner]

Ah, if you look at page number 108, on the left hand page they have written Do for ditto on some lines, so then when they started writing just one letter, on the right hand page of that image, they abbreviated Do to D. I suppose they eventually realised it was pointless because writing a D was no quicker than writing a C, M or W!

[Merry]

I was going to say dissenter, like OC, but it's odd there are loads of Ds on page 110-113 (I didn't look before that) but once you reach 114 onwards there are virtually none (all the same hand). I would like that to mean D stands for some specific disease, but I can't think what.

[Merry]

Ah, cross posted with Kate!

[Val in Oz]

Oh did you see the entry on page 108 for march 28th

A strange wom'n - W'house

how sad

[kiterunner]

It's the children "dropt in church yard" that bother me.

[Val in Oz]

Does that mean that the children were literally 'dumped' in the churchyard by their parents for burial? Surely not

[kiterunner]

I don't know but I don't like the sound of it.

[Merry]

I didn't see any of those - were they named?

[kiterunner]

4th Jun 1740 - Will: Yearly's(?) Child dropt C Yard
8th Jun 1740 - Male Child dropt in ye Churchyd
They're on page 110, leftmost column.

[kiterunner]

Oh, and then on the right hand page on that image there is 3rd July 1740 Female Child dropt Chu:h Yd.

[Merry]

Oooh, creepy. Thank you Kate. Do you think they would be stillbirths?

[kiterunner]

No idea. I don't understand the first one, whether Will Yearly is the father's name or if it's a way of saying the baby was a year old?

[Phoenix]

Sounds as if they were foundlings - though I don't know whether drop't was being used as in "dropped off" in that period.

[Merry]

Or might they just be unbaptised, and thereby 'not worthy' of a name?

[Merry]

Seems they were probably foundlings as Phoenix said. Earlier records show stillborn children of named fathers recorded with their address, similar to the other records.

[Phoenix]

"Hester was Baptised April 15, 1737, being a Foundling dropped at Mr. Everett's Door; her surname is Cradle."

The above is a quotation found by Googling.

I think this is about the time the Foundling Hospital was formed, simply beacuse so many children were being abandoned.