Oh the expence!

[marylou]

I've got an illustrated bible with no hard cover at all unfortunately. I remember going with my gran to collect it from an old lady's house in the village. The old lady had died, leaving no family friends and neighbours were allowed to have her belongings. Gran being a big church woman opted for the bible..........I used to love looking at it because of the pictures. It had all the photo mounts for family details but sadly they were never completed and it now sits in her old bible box with the hard bound bible (no illustrations) that was hers, along with several prayer books.

[ChasH]

I wonder if anybody noticed and understood the reason for my spelling it, "expence"?  Equivalent to X pence = multiplied by pence

Chas

[Shropshire Lass]

I may have other interesting things to post if you think it worthwhile.

Please do, Chas.  I love seeing stuff like this - and there's no other way we would ever get to see things that are in private hands.

Monica

[LizzieW]

understood the reason for my spelling it, "expence"

I think like most Rootschatters, I missed that.  We're probably all too polite and just thought you couldn't spell!! 

Lizzie

[Lydart]

Meles ... when I was in Canada, I was quite shocked at the cost of a simple thing like a hard-backed notebook, similar to one I had bought before my trip in WHSmiths for about £2 ... it worked out at about £9 !

I couldnt understand it when I saw all the trees and pulp mills in the Rockies ... why was anything paper so expensive ?  This includes books, even postcards ...

[Siamese Girl]

I wonder what a similar new book would cost today?  Remembering the register had to have parchment pages not paper - I reckon it would cost you a lot more than £77.

Carole

[Simon G.]

I wonder what a similar new book would cost today?  Remembering the register had to have parchment pages not paper - I reckon it would cost you a lot more than £77.

Most definitely it would.  Literally hundreds of sheets of parchment would set you back quite a few pound...given it's the treated skin of dead animals, parchment tends to be a tad more labour intensive to produce than paper (although if made well, it tends to last since parchment is usually more naturally alkaline than paper...and your most major issue is usually dessication rather than acid decay).  That, of course, is assuming you can find a specialist who can make parchment in bulk.

[ChasH]

I wonder what a similar new book would cost today?  Remembering the register had to have parchment pages not paper - Carole

Never, never, never would anybody even dream of using parchment for such a mundane purpose as a parish register for births, marriages and deaths.  Parchment was reserved for important documents.  One only needs to look at the slapdash way most registers were written.  Had parchment been used they would have taken more care for it would be much more expensive than paper.

The acidity of modern mass produced paper was not in hand produced paper used in parish registers and the worst problems seem to have been caused by incorrect storage conditions rather than deterioration due to age and chemicals.   A register written today on ordinary paper with modern ink would not outlive a decent one already two hundred years old if both were stored in the same condition!

Regards

Chas

[Siamese Girl]

Well I would have expected a register from 1692 to have been parchment. All the early one's I've seen have been. I don't know if they all were but they were supposed to be parchment :

"In 1598, Queen Elizabeth I approved an order which stipulated that every church had to:

- use registers made of parchment
- copy any old, surviving records into the parchment registers
- copy the year's baptism, marriage and burial entries and send them to the relevant bishop annually for safekeeping; these became known as Bishops' Transcripts.

Queen Elizabeth was particularly concerned that records dating from the beginning of her reign be preserved, which is why so many parish registers date from 1558. "


I know the later ones, when they gradually introduced printed forms for marriage after Hardwicke's Marriage Act and the ones for baptisms after 1812 were paper, but early ones were on parchment, which is why so many have lasted - as were legal documents.

Carole