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Messages - Nick_Ips

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 ... 78
1
The Common Room / Re: Cremation ...?
« on: Monday 29 December 25 18:01 GMT (UK)  »

If it is West Suffolk, Ipswich, or Seven Hills the East Anglian Daily Times lists the (public?) cremations taking place that day. But just the person's name and age.

2
The Common Room / Re: Government Find a Will Service
« on: Friday 05 December 25 08:56 GMT (UK)  »

Just had my first two email notifications of pre-price change ordered Wills being available - one ordered 13/11/2025 and the other 14/11/2025.

Seems like they are starting to tackle the backlog!

3
The Common Room / Re: Government Find a Will Service
« on: Thursday 20 November 25 11:03 GMT (UK)  »

The site seems to be back up again (for me at least) now.

Other than the orders now appearing in a random order I don't see any other changes.

4
The Common Room / Re: Government Find a Will Service
« on: Monday 17 November 25 13:59 GMT (UK)  »
Quote from: garden genie on Monday 17 November 25 13:17 GMT (UK)
Boo, I don't think demand will dry up as much as that. Didn't someone say that family historians are less than half of their customers?
When we bought this house many years ago we had to wait while three probates were obtained to prove the man had the right to sell the house!

With compulsory (property) registration those sort of needs will be diminishing over time.  Once a property is registered the historic probate trail should become irrelevant unless there was a serious legal dispute.

5
The Common Room / Re: Government Find a Will Service
« on: Monday 17 November 25 10:00 GMT (UK)  »
Quote from: antonymark on Sunday 16 November 25 19:30 GMT (UK)
Should I be expecting a long wait for my wills? Has anyone had delivery of a recent order?

If their order numbers are sequential (they appear to be) then I reckon they had about 5500 orders between the morning of the 13th and midnight last night.

But one order can include multiple Will requests (I don't know if there is an upper limit, but I did 10 at a time), so the actual number of Wills requested could be much higher.

Some of those will be digital already, so not as much work as the others.  But I get the feeling there will be a service message posted soon saying that it will take longer than normal for orders to be completed.

I was a bit surprised the system didn't go down completely at some point yesterday.  I guess the current maintenance is to change things to reflect the new charges... I last looked at the site around 1am and it was still only charging £1.50 per Will then.

Thinking about it, the government claims the cost of each request is something like £16, therefore that's what the new charge will be.  But documents which have already been digitised and are therefore available immediately won't require as much work, so for them £16 seems a bit of a rip-off.

In particular, the soldier's wills (that don't contain much info anyway) seem expensive for £16, and charging so much for families trying to reconnect with relatives who gave everything for their country seems a bit off.  But I guess this just reflects the modern approach to government.

6
The Common Room / Re: Free Access to Ancestry Military Records
« on: Wednesday 12 November 25 11:53 GMT (UK)  »
Quote from: Chris Doran on Wednesday 12 November 25 10:52 GMT (UK)
...Apologies to those who have been disappointed by this and the limited range of FindMyPast's databases available compared to last year, as was I.

No need for apologies Chris, your 'heads up' for these free offers is always much appreciated and we all understand you don't have any control over the extent/limitations of the offer.  :)

Thank you again.

7
The Lighter Side / Re: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« on: Wednesday 12 November 25 10:28 GMT (UK)  »
Quote from: LizzieL on Wednesday 12 November 25 10:15 GMT (UK)
Was it FindMyPast (then 1837online) or Ancestry that had a strange format called dejvu (or something like that) for census or bmd files? You had to download a special viewer. I have a load of those files and nothing to look at them with. It was 4 computers ago, so viewer lost, but files still saved.

Try IrfanView (freeware for non-comercial use).  There is an image type expansion plugin which includes the DjVu format.

If you've got the time to explore there are also options to batch convert to a different format like jpg.

8
The Lighter Side / Re: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« on: Wednesday 12 November 25 10:10 GMT (UK)  »
Quote from: Josephine on Monday 27 October 25 02:15 GMT (UK)
Do you remember when you could only view a census page in a small "viewer" box? And you couldn't download the entire page in one file?

I don't remember the viewer box, but my early use of FindMyPast and Ancestry was at the Family Records Centre and then at Kew.  Neither allowed you to download images to a memory stick, so it was a case of printing the page (not cheap) or my preferred option of handwriting a transcript and then typing that up when I got home.

Much of what I got from the 1901 census in the early days was done that way - made more complicated with the FRC rationing users to 1 hour, after which you had to go back to a desk to request another hour and wait for your turn to come around again.  At least there were the microfilm/fiche readers to use while waiting.  :)

I think Kew set up the same rationing thing when the 1911 census was launched, but (I guess) with more people having access at home I don't remember having to wait long for a session, and they dropped the rationing quite soon after it started.

9
The Common Room / Re: What value is the hyphen in a double barrelled surname?
« on: Tuesday 11 November 25 21:27 GMT (UK)  »

Helps clarify which names are the surname and which are the given name(s).

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, could be Andrew Mountbatten, son of Mr & Mrs Windsor

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, most likely Andrew, son of Mr & Mrs Mountbatten-Windsor

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