Carole
I thought you were going to contact Darbyshire Archives to track down:
Information that might be on Mary Ann's Baptism at Ilkeston, ie sponsors/witnesses - which might provide a clue (and if we were really super lucky the father's name might be on it). The igi info online doesn't give these extra bits. We have the date of the baptism at Ilkeston so it wouldn't be an enormous lookup or request.
Alternatively we could see if someone could look up the microfiche at an LDS centre.
The birth registration that you got didn't give us any clues to chase up.
We don't know where Mary Ann's siblings were (or if) they were baptised so it would be a big fishing exercise to ask Derbyshire archives to look up.
Regarding Nottingham university .... It is a lot of money! I am wondering if it is worth asking them the following questions:
Registers of birth - what information is on a Basford workhouse birth registration? It may be very sparse and not worth proceeding.
(Note: if proceeding, the field of search would be reasonably narrow - Alice 1898/1899 and John 1905/1906)
Registers of admissions & discharge - what info would be on this? How long would it take to look up a 6 year time period?
(Note: if proceeding, I think we would have to narrow the field down to minimise $$ to say, 1895 - 1901 (when we found Harriet & Alice at Basford Workhouse) in the census)
And leave the other registers for the moment - to be investigated potentially in the future.
And finally - where is that marriage certificate? I could swim to old blighty and back in the time it takes to look up, copy and post this document!
Cocksie
