RootsChat.Com

Looking at it again I think the writer is thrifty with his full stops.

If you put a full stop before the Several and say it out loud you can see that it might just be a capital letter "S". the word sepoys does not appear at the beginning of the sentence so would not, usually,  have a capital letter

They all are. Very. And not only with full stops. There is also a bedlam with capital letters. Words start with Capitals, and not, in the middle of the same sentence. sentences start with small letters, there is an utter Ulta-Pulta going on. So I do in fact two Versions of all texts - first a one to one transcription where a page in the text is a page in the copy, with all the mistakes (marked) and explanation of places and words and whatsoever; then I do a second version in a readable fashion with only the most important footnotes and glosseries.
In the first version I try to mark the proper sentences with added punctuation. But even that is not always possible, as there are also missing words (and even whole lines).

I rage all the time about those bloody scribes - until I start correcting my own transliterations. There I have ALL the same mistakes! (the only difference between me and the scribes is: I do corrections). It's a tedious work I do now for about seven years (and counting).
I am getting there. But it takes time.

Thanks for the input!
Jan

Did you read the Wikipedia article I posted?

Yes I did, and thank you for that. There is also a nice one herehttps://www.babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2006/06/rules-for-long-s.html. But those deal mainly with the printed word and note that most rules are not pertinent with the written one.
As mentioned, I have filed it by now under quirks of a peculiar scribe (really wish I had the names and backgrounds of all of them).

Jan

I wonder if the long  s was used before a vowel and the short s was used before a consonant.

see Several vs. sepoys

j.

Sorry it took me a while to reply. The text is a 1831 scribe copy of a 1830 personal diary. The scribe was a local working in an office for the East India Company.

here is a slightly larger snippet:

Thank you all! I think I can proceed for now. There will be more problems for sure. If I find out anything about the place I will post it here.

J.