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Old Photographs, Recognition, Handwriting Deciphering => Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition => Topic started by: sunnylew on Saturday 16 April 11 00:54 BST (UK)
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I was looking through the Framlingham Presbyterian Registers of the early 1800s and came across quite a lot of what seems to be some sort of coded script or shorthand.
It pops up here and there amongst regular script, and I can only think there was something that the pastor did not want somebody (the authorities?) to read.
Does anyone recognise the text as a particular form of code, or know of such things being linked to Presbyterians of the time?
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How curious. I can't help much, but to me some of the characters look vaguely like zodiac symbols, the dots and bars are a little reminiscent of the Freemason code, and googling shows images of Mary Queen of Scots cipher that (possibly only because it's also written with pen-and-ink) looks similar-ish.
It could be the author's own invention, but if so, why use it in a register? Who would/could read it? If no one, then why bother writing it?
What, if anything do you know about the William Hill it's discussing? What's the context of the page? Is this a biography?
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This is amongst a list of burials.
I know nothing more of William - but many more entries have the same symbols, sometimes only two or three of them amidst regular english characters. William's was the one that just had the greatest sample of the script.
I've attached another page for comparison.
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How very interesting. It looks like Pitman shorthand about 40 years before it was introduced!
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That's what I was thinking GS - shorthand of some description!
Very odd - and very very frustrating!! We need some cipher breakers!
Please, may we read a bit more about James the little boy who from infancy attended of his own accord . . . . the first day he came . . . . . . . ? (I need a face for agog with curiosity!!) What happened?
that's very intriguing! Just while we are trying to unlock the code you understand!! ;)
Wiggy :)
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I agree Wiggy - more info on that little lad please!
I notice that in the first clip there is the symbol for 'female' so I am wondering whether the writer used his code sometimes for tittle-tattle. If that is the case, what a shame that we shall never know what it was!
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Just a thought, is the Do after the name, as in Groom, short for ditto, so to say they are both from the same place. Is it worth comparing William Hills entry to the one above it.
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If you can find his name on the register, you may be able to find out more about him, and why he used a code.
There are books about historic Framlingham on Google Books which may mention him as well.
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Which Framlingham are you talking about - is it in UK??
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How intriguing! Maybe this Presbyterian minister was an ancestor of Pitman?? :D
The symbol like a circle with a cross under and a dot in the circle (Under the H in Hill) certainly looks like the medical symbol for female.
the symbol after 1799 in #64, I have seen before but don't remember what it means. It's also in #69. Maybe I've seen that in patient charts too. Any medicos online?
I wonder did the author fancy himself as a doctor?
Dawn M
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:o
How fascinating! I believe there are some rootschat members who can read shorthand. Not sure which shorthand or which members though .... does anyone know? :-\
Can anyone make head nor tail of any of these?:
http://www.drawingsonwriting.org/page105.htm
It doesn't appear to be pitman .. perhaps one of the others? :-\
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That's an interesting site, Ruskie!
In my ignorance, I thought Pitman was the first shorthand ???
Re your question of making head / tail of those symbols, if you look at the top of the set you will see the alphabet and most of them have approx. 26 symbols, so I'd say they are the roman alphabet letters shown in those various shorthand systems.
My shorthand is not shown on that list, but it has many similarities with Pitman, and I can recognise some of the Pitman letter symbols.
Dawn M
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Which Framlingham are you talking about - is it in UK??
Framlingham is in Suffolk, England. There are probably towns with the same name in other countries, but the second extract from the register mentions Ipswich and Bungay, which are also in Suffolk.
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I noticed the female symbol also. The script does look like shorthand but where was the pitman shorthand derived from. May be it's latin abbreviations. The 2 lines together towards the end usually are used to indicate a new paragraph i thought. The one c has a line above it and usually indicates the word with. Looks a bit like tee line shorthand. Not sure whether i've spelt that right.
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I am assuming that like Pitman, this is phonetic. I used to be a verbatim shorthand writer in the past, but I can't read this, despite the fact that it does at first glance bear a close resemblance to Pitman shorthand.
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I'm still trying to get my head round those dates, as in 65 and 66. One looks like the date of death but what is the earlier date or year for after their name? The other doesn't appear to refer to a death at all.
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How fascinating! I too would love to know what the rest of the entry about Joseph Barker says :)
I learnt Pitman New Era shorthand in the early 1980s but I can't decipher any of this. Ruskie's link is very interesting, the Pitman line does show the strokes used to write sounds closest to the letters although of course when you're writing in shorthand spelling is immaterial as you are recording the sounds only. When you consider that the first six strokes you learn are written thus:
\ 'pee' \ 'bee' | 'tee' | 'dee' / 'ch' / 'j'
then any code is quite likely to contain strokes that look like these.
I can't quite work out what the register is listing, at first it looks like deaths/burials but then later it mentions people who are alive. It's almost like a list of his 'parishoners' but counting all the dead folk too - very odd.
Heather
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what a coincidence! I was shown a religious book yesterday (possibly non-conformist) which has a page of hand written code in it. I have been googling for ideas and then thought I would check on here to see if anything similar had turned up. imagine my surprise to see this as the top thread!
here is the page of code - sadly not similar to the one mentioned here
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Netti, there appear to be numbers on the left of the centre line; I am wondering if it is written from right to left, in view of the lines on the left-hand side.
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I have indicated them here:
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I noticed those numbers as well, also random numbers in the code.
there is another short section of code in the flyleaf, which may help to solve it but isn't helping me so far!
Sorry for hijacking the thread sunnylew, shall I start another?
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Hi Netti,
It's probably best that we leave both codes together in order to pool the minds of Rootschat's Bletchley Park.
To tell you the truth I hadn't actively tried to solve the code, but it would probably be well worth the effort.
I agree that those numbers appear to mean the script is right to left. Also, if you look at the left hand end of quite a few of the earlier lines there is a" ___ . " which also pops up in the body. I wonder if this (reading r-l) is a full stop. At the end of lines it could also be similar to the stroke you'd put at the end of the amount on a cheque to stop someone altering what had been written.
Do you know of anything else that could link the two?
I know mine was written in Framlingham, Suffolk, and from the dated entries it was around 1810 or so.
It seems to be a list of members, as has been pointed out, - and from the new image below of the whole page (including the tale of Joseph Barker) - but it is a list of members who had joined since a particular minister had taken over.
I think they may have voted in ministers, and then this could be a little tally he made to prove his worth which had biographical details agglomerated onto it.
As far as I can see there are ciphers only in lists of church members made by one particular Pastor. So it may be a personal thing.
This still does not explain the cipher, but does any of this seem similar to your book?
P.S.
I don't want to get rootschat in copyright trouble by putting too many images online - does anyone know how much of this can be considered fair use?
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I only got a quick look at the book when a relative brought it over on Friday. It appears to be a religious poem with notes and was published in 1773. The relative said that they have another book inscribed John Squires which also has code under his name.
The original query was finding out more about John Squires who left his estate to a Mary Hartill but we don't know if they were related. Mary and her husband James Purser were non-conformists. I am hoping to get more details soon but the code intrigued me and I couldn't resist adding it to your thread!
I can't see a similarity and I also wonder if they were personal ciphers? When I have more time I am going to study it more closely. Having such a large chunk might make it a bit easier, although I wonder if it is just religious text, even copied from the book to practice the cipher???
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Only had a quick look and ufortunatly access is via my phone at the mo so proper searching through google is not possible. But I'm pagan. I have seen this type of script before. I think it may well be a type of Theban. It was the reference to zodiac symbols. The triangle in another part is man or earth. I'll have a propar look later this evening unless someone breaks it. But bare in mind direct substitutions of characters may not work as it may well be in Latin or another language also. Or may be written right to left and or down the page rather than across it. Good luck.
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:o
This is getting more and more intriguing!
I really hope someone can crack these.
Is this the kind of thing you mean Storm?:
http://www.rootschat.com/links/0csu/
(some of the marks do look similar, but there appear to be more simple straight lines and dots in the images above)
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Like I said it's like some forms of Theban. But it's more like priest codes. I remember just off the top of my head. Like I said when I have a better larger screen in front of me I'll have a better idea. But look into "monk code" for a start.
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No idea what I'm talking about - but couldn't be runes could it??
Wiggy
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Runes are split into Futharks. Each age has it's own Futhark. Their my speciality but no it's not runic in the Nordic sense.
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Amazing! I've never seen anything like this. I have seen things in registers which were tittletattle, or the writers own opinion of the person who had died. My guess is that this is something scandalous about the person , or their family.
Anne
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Nothing obvious comes up when googling "monk code" (no images anyway) - look forward to what you can dig up Storm. :)
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I had to look up Futhark - the definition was not helpful! ;)
But thanks for hitting that suggestion out of play - one less possibility to think about - a nice clear NO is very helpful!
Wiggy :)
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How intriguing this is! The shorthand doesn't look like Pitman to me, at least not the one I learned many moons ago!
Samuel Pepys wrote his famous diaries using the Shelton system and I don't think it's that either; it can be viewed here:
http://www.fireoflondon.org.uk/resources/imagebank/set1/Diary+of+Samuel+Pepys.htm
Jill
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Hahaha I know what you mean. Basically the word could be replaced with alphabet. It's called Futhark because the order of the runes as they are used by Nordic races makes the first few look like the word Futhark. But I am still leaning towards the monk codes. I wish I could remember where I had read it. Till I'm at my PC I won't be able to find it. Sat here at a well known supermarket chain minding the dog while OH fights through the crowds.
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To get back to the op, the chap who wrote the register was the Reverend Samuel Say Toms. I haven't found out why he used code or shorthand, but there are a few mentions of him.
From the Eastern Unitarian site - "Toms was quite a celebrity in Framlingham, and his retirement was marked by a famous dinner in the Crown Hotel. He is buried in St Michael's churchyard, to the east of the church, beneath a large table tomb that bears witness to the regard in which he was held."
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Right well had a fair rummage online over the last hour,
ruled out several. I have a book, sadly in storage which has these symbols in. Cant get at it until I have a new house. However I think its some form of greek/phoenician. Here is a link which may help the OP but will, having had a quick glance help the second poster. With several symbols matching especially from the greek 800 - 600 BC selection. There would of course be regional differences and also error on the part of the drawer/writer. You find this with rune craft through the ages. Also with runes a square up on its point so it looks like a diamond means farm or enclosure. An X or kiss, means gift. Combine the two and you get a window design. This was known as a bind rune. And literally meant a gift of a farm or house depending on the context. X in fact is why we put kisses at the end of letters. It is a gift to the recipient from us. This may well be the case with this language. Also there is something about the dots I remember as well though I cannot recall it. I suspect the dots change the meaning of the symbol. You will notice that at sentence type intervals there is a slanted semi colon. I have not found this symbol as yet and it may well be that this denotes the end of a sentence. We see the same at the end of text written with italic pens in medieval times. Four little italic diamonds forming a big diamond. End of passage. We use this even today to terminate something.
Ill keep looking but it may well be a good place to start.
Here: http://members.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/chapters/pix/alphabet.gif
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thanks Storm, I have sent it to a friend who studied Greek, will let you all know what she says!
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I must say my first thought upon seeing Netti's code was that it was in Linear B, the ancient Greek Script, but this script wasn't deciphered until the late 1950's and I don't think Linear A has yet been uncontestedly deciphered.
The theban script definitely has similarities to parts of the code in both books, but it almost looks, especially in Netti's, that someone has grabbed some symbols from this that and the other code to make one of their own.
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I have been playing about with one of the pages and noted the similarities of phrases; not that this really helps with deciphering of course but interesting nonetheless.
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The fact that he uses numbers may provide a clue. That maybe his written symbols are a code rather than a language. If it had a numerical symbol he should have used it there also. Instead he writes that in. Any language would have a numerical symbology as well. Here he uses English numerics but coded text. This gives three possibilities - he left the dates in English for ease of reference. Someone else had access to the text and would need to refer to it, contacting him to translate, there was no numerical system in his codes.
I think by researching him you could trace his movements and this in turn may show what he was exposed to during his life. So he mAy have been an apprentice to a particular group of people which would teach him this code. Like as I think previously stated "the masons". If it's not be suggested I'll throw that out there as well. That those coded references are also masons and their details protected.
This is a fascinating puzzle but the two remote examples show a common source. Another clue. However have to agree with previous post - it does seem that he has robbed from various sources. But this points to adaptation on his part, or the masons as well. As like Christianity they robbed what came before and called it their own. Like scientology is doing today so the Christians did with paganism and a lot of paganism stems from Greek influence. The confusion caused may be due to seeing this, further down the time line, blend of symbolic technique.
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I've had a look about for the Pastor, Samuel Say Toms.
Apparently he was the second or third generation of Dissenting ministers in his family. His father released a few books and some middling poetry.
He was pastor for something like 56 years in Framlingham, and was the one who declared the Framlingham Congregation as Unitarian (though I don't profess to know what that means - more to research later :) ).
In terms of his codes, I wonder whether their proximity to the date is the key.
On at least two occasions (one is below) he has actually put in the day and month but not the year before he has gone on to add a string of cipher. On at least one other occasion there has been no date at all - just name and cipher (also below), which seems odd given that this appears to be a list of when every member of his congregation joined.
And in every occasion the cipher is immediately following the date, which follows the name. Never does he say that so and so died "X", was removed on" X" - followed by code.
Astrology, perhaps? - it could be planets in houses etc
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What exactly is this register? it looks like a record of members who have left the church, either of their own accord or because they have been expelled. I've seen something similar but without the codes in a baptist church minute book, where there were a lot of references to expulsions because of immorality. I imagine the code describes exactly what form the immorality or bad behaviour took.
Anne
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It's actually a list of people who had joined the Church since the pastor Samuel Say Toms took over. He lists them whether they have since been removed or not.
He may well be saying something scandalous about them - but he seems to use cod on people who have not been expelled as well. And in other places he does not mince his words.
My 5x Great Grandfather Nicholas Buckingham was expelled for drinking, repenting, and then drinking again. Pastor Toms quotes the bible when he speaks of sadly casting Nicholas out - "As the dog returns to its vomit ..."
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I'm wondering whether the discovery of the Rosetta Stone had any influence - it was discovered in 1799, and first went on display in the British Museum in 1802. Rev Toms started using code in 1807, so he could have read about it, or been to see it.
His symbols look similar to the demotic text on the stone.
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Reviving a possibly ancient thread here. Just to put an end to some of the rather extravagant speculation, both the original shorthand snippets and the subsequent additional full-page post are almost certainly in one of the (many!) variants of one of Shelton's systems (Pepys and Isaac Newton were both users of Shelton's system. They were hugely popular at the time, and were used widely). Church officials were a significant market, because of the importance of the verbatim reporting of sermons. Subterfuge and shennanigens are, sadly, not a necessary corollary of shorthand usage.
That said, Shelton's systems (and others of the time), although well documented, take a bit of getting into, and I am a bit rusty. The problem is the vast number of so-called `arbitraries', signs which don't follow the rules, and which have to be looked up in any number of badly written, badly printed pamphlets and tutorials, many of which are still not available in electronic form. Shorthand writers of the time also seemed to relish the challenge of writing in the tiniest hand they could (Pepys being a signal offender). The full-page contribution to this thread is, however, a model of clarity (as far as such is possible!).
I'm hunting around for the correct versions of Shelton for these two conundra (they are probably not the same), and will post transcriptions when (if) I do.
Sean.
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Finding out what script he actually used is great news!
Although it was fun imagining what could have been said, I'm all for learning what the real information is.
If you find a good crib for the version the Rev has used here, and it is online, would you mind posting the link?
There's plenty more code in those registers than that I've uploaded, and if I feel game in the future, it would be good to know how to go about transcribing the rest.
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If you find a good crib for the version the Rev has used here, and it is online, would you mind posting the link?
archive.org/google books don't have scans of any of Shelton's works, unfortunately. Many years ago I obtained a Xerox of one of them (the edition for the version that Pepys used) from the British Library (Shelton's `Tachygraphy, 1647'). There is an academic reprint of this 1647 edition and an earlier 1642 edition, from 1970, edited by William Matthews (Matthews, W., 1970, Shelton and Pepys. The Augustan Reprint Society, Publication #145-146, UCLA, California). I also recall a reprint in Westminster''s public Central Library just off Trafalgar square that I copied out by hand when I was a kid (I never got into train spotting......).
The BL has many editions. The author's full name is Thomas Shelton; The first edition was 1626, called `Short Writing'; later editions (many!) were called `Tachygraphy', which is what we have here, and finally Zeiglographia in 1685. With the BL's copy-on-demand service it is easy enough to get hold of digital copies, but you have to pay, of course. I won't be doing that; and if I get stuck with the resources I have, I'll leave it to you or other researchers more diligent than me to pick up the trail on the Shelton-shelves in the BL.
Your snippets look tantalisingly close to Tachygraphy, and the other poster's full-page I think is exactly this system.
There's plenty more code in those registers than that I've uploaded, and if I feel game in the future, it would be good to know how to go about transcribing the rest.
The `Tachygraphy' pamphlets are easy to read and short. Spelling is obviously quaint to our eyes, and you have to work with the long ess (which looks like an f without a crossbar). The 17th century word for a `dot', which comes up a lot in these tutors, is `tittle'. These systems were reasonably sophisticated, not just a simple letter-for-letter cipher, so you will need to work through the pamphlet as the young Pepys would have done and learn the principles of the system. It's quite easy (about an afternoon's effort), and a lot of fun, and orders of magnitude simpler than modern systems like Pitman, Gregg or even Teeline. But as with all shorthands, each writer tends to mold the system in idosyncratic ways, so even knowing the system there is still plenty of head-scratching work to be done.
If you have amongst your registers any more extensive examples (10+ lines?), could you post one or two, with surrounding longhand context, if any?
Sean.
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The first page of this thread has the largest section of the script, and the one attached here has what looks like the next largest section.
Apart from that, most entries are only 5-10 sigils in length.
I hope this one helps.
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Thanks for the extra image.
I must confess I am struggling. The outlines all have the right Sheltonian `geometry', but they don't make sense in the 1647 system that I'm familiar with. Shelton did change his `alphabet' a couple of times during the evolution of his system, swapping symbols so that what was the symbol for `n' in one system becomes the symbol for `t' in its successor. Unfortunately I have now exhausted my shorthand books without pinning down the exact alphabet. Some good old-fashioned cryptanalysis/crossword solving would probably yield good results, especially has you have a large corpus, but unfortunately I don't have the time to dedicate to it.
Anyway, rest assured that you are not dealing with some devious code, but with fairly standard clerical (in both senses!) practice for the time.
I will leave the printouts on my desk for a while as background `noise'. If inspiration strikes I will post here, but for now I must get back to work! My apologies if I raised too many hopes.
Sean.
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Some unwarranted pessimism on my part.
A beer and a trawl of books.google.com has turned up a real gem: Mason's `La Plume Volante':
(http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/La_plume_volante_or_The_art_of_short_han.html?id=IpsDAAAAQAAJ&redir_esc=y).
It originally dates to 1707, and was the foundation of numerous shorthands all the way up to the 19th century! You can browse it online, or download a pdf to print off. What is fascinating (to me!) is that probably 95% of the outlines are *exactly* the same as Shelton's outlines, but they have completely different meanings. This book is also unusual for manuals of the time in that it basically contains a vast dictionary of some 4000+ outlines. It is hugely useful.
I suspect this will work for both the register shorthand and the full-page one. In fact I have just noticed that Mason's outline for the word `page' appears before the numbers in the centre margin of the full-page scan :)
Needless to say I'm a happy bunny. Will attempt a transcription tomorrow when I have printed out all 125 pages of the manual and spread them out all over the floor!
S.
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Well, I have had success with netti's full-page document, but the shorter snippets from the origianl poster's register are proving a tougher nut to crack.
For those interested, the full-page document is somebody's commentary on a book called `Grace Triumphant' by Fellowes (1770), an online edition of which can be found here: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ygkDAAAAQAAJ. The lefthand column of shorthand consists of verbatim quotes from this heady poem ("Lend me thy chariot and steeds of fire"), and the numerals in the centre margin are page-number references to Fellowe's book, which do indeed correspond to the electronic edition above. Very nice.
The system is Mason's, but the second edition (Art's Advancemnt) rather than the third (La Plume Volante), so I struggled for a while, especially as there are no online or electronic copies of the former.
As to the poor OP's snippets, they certainly look like Mason or a derivative, but they seem not to correspond exactly to La Plume Volante, and are so telegrammatic that educated guesswork from context is not easy. If Mason is the key, then entry #63 [Rebecca Cockerel] and entry #64 [Mary Masterson] both end in the word `lease-holding'. I am getting hold of a copy of Mason's second edition from the British Library and will continue my head-scratching over the weekend :)
Sean
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stenog - you are amazing! thank you so much for all your hard work. I hope you have enjoyed the puzzle :)
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stenog - you are amazing! thank you so much for all your hard work. I hope you have enjoyed the puzzle :)
It beats the crossword hands down, and the best part is that the results actually matter to someone.
S.
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Well, hot on the heels of yesterday's success, I bring more glad tidings!
I have found the system used in the original poster's register. It was devised by one Jeremiah Rich in the 17th century, and was, despite its manifest shortcomings, hugely popular amongst non-conformist clergy and professors at Oxford university until well into the 19th century. In fact Pitman recounts a correspondence he had with an Oxford don, and friend of his, in the 1830s, who still used the system every day, and was still asked to teach it (though he professes to have steered all those prospective pupils towards Pitman's then state-of-the-art Phonography).
Rich's system is an absolute nightmare to decipher, I have discovered, as I am learning the system as I go. Not for the faint of heart is the original (and posthumous) publication, called `The Pen's Dexterity', here: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rxZSAAAAYAAJ . Shelton and Mason were, I'm afraid, red-herrings, although the similarities in geometry are striking.
Line 2 of entry #51 [William Hill] which contains the `venus symbol', and gave rise to some speculation early in the thread, begins "<?> he told me last Sunday ... supposing that he might .... ". The venus symbol is actually the sign for Sunday (or maybe Friday.... depends which edition of Rich you look at. Sigh.)
Progress is slow, because the system is so complicated, but I'll get there :)
Sean.
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Hi stenog, what a fascinating thread.
Is netti's little snip in Reply #20 the same? Because I thought it looked an awful lot like Hebrew :P
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Reviving this thread from many moons ago which I happened across trying to find information on the shorthand style characters used by Samuel Say Toms in the entry for William Hill (in the original post), who happens to be my 5 x gt grandfather. A long shot I suspect but I did wonder if anyone had actually managed to transcribe the entry?
YB
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Had completely forgotten that the shorthand in the O.P.'s post was still a conundrum. Thank you for reviving it.
I have successfully tracked down the exact shorthand method used: Rich's Short-Hand, Improved by Dr. Doddridge, London 1830. Scan available at:
https://cdm15457.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15457coll1/id/50 (https://cdm15457.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15457coll1/id/50)
The entry for William Hill reads as follows:
51. William Hill. Ditto. Received [sc. communion] once with the Methodists when Mr. Anderson in haste administered it. Did it as he told me last Friday without proper consideration and supposing that he might at the same time receive [sc. communion] with us but when he found that might not be the Cause and that they withdrew from hearing me [sc. preach], he went no more amongst them and desired Mr. Carr to cross his name out of the Class list. Died December 30. 1807. Aged. 81.
For the shorthand connoisseurs, I have marked up the O.P.'s image with a word-for-word transcription, attached herewith.
I'll post similar for the other snippets shortly.
S.
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Here is the next most extensive fragment.
There may be a hint if innuendo in here if you squint really hard, but it would need an expert in biblical exegesis to confirm (or deny). At face value it appears nevertheless to be a ringing endorsement for the particular family.
... dead
May well be [?] the first fruit of it yet comelier and gracious hearted and all follow the Lamb whither so ever He goeth til they join Him on Mount Zion.
May. 2. 1796. Six members now living who were ...
Crib attached.
S.
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Stenog
Thank you very much for providing the transcription for Wm Hill's entry, I am very appreciative of your time in doing so.
So it transpires that Wm hedged his bets by trying to attend both the Methodists and the Presbyterian dissenters which wasn't too well received and short lived....
I look forward to seeing how the other snippets within the register transcribe.
Thanks again
YB
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The O.P.'s second page, containing entries 60 to 67. A couple of head-scratchers here which elude me, particularly entry 62. The shorthand notes are very telegrammatic.
A repeating phrase is "from the establishment", which I take to mean someone who has come over from the established Church of England.
Anyway, for what it's worth, here's as far as I have been able to get:
61. Mrs. Groom (his Wife.) Ditto. from the establishment. 1800 removed ...
62. Elizabeth Burton. Ditto. t[...]r and farm it hope great change knew her of late. removed ...
63. Rebecca Cockerel Mar. 4. 1798. servant to my mother l[...]en. removed ...
64. Mary Masterson. 1799. servant to my sister l[...]en.
65. Sybilla Hill. 1798 from the establishment. died ...
...
67. Sarah Dawson. Mr Vagham Hill's servant. married ...
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What an incredible topic, fascinating to read :)
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And finally... the O.P.'s last snippet containing entries 70 and 80. Again, a bit cryptic.
I take had it at the church in entry 70 to mean that he (naughtily) took communion at the (established) church. What the bread sing might mean I have no idea!
Entry 80's last two words defeat me. I can only guess that they are a person's name, in which case a someone Dale.
Here they are:
70. Mary Catermole. from the establishment. May. 3. left us on the [?]bread [?]sing
withdrawn because her husband had it at the church. died 1821.
80. Mrs. Barret. left us with [?]T[...]e [?]Dale.
S.