Birth certificate with pound sign in the name

[cbowley]

I have a 1904 UK birth certificate in which the child's name contains a £ sign. Has anyone seen this before or know what it signifies? The child was illegitimate and born in the workhouse. There are three numbered items on the certificate. I've seen numbered items before where a change is made and a note made at the side of the certificate with the registrar's initials. This certificate follows that pattern. The child's name is given as Charles Kate £Harold. (Following the pattern at the time the name column doesn't include the surname.) Kate has been scored out and numbered 32. Kate is also the mother's name. The £ sign has been numbered 33 although that number might apply to the whole £Harold. The father's name column contains a + and is numbered 34 but it isn't clear what the change was. Maybe it was originally a dash and was changed to a +.

My guess is that the £ sign is an attempt to indicate the name of the father. I've checked in the 1901 census for people in the area with the surname Harold and haven't found any.

The birth registration was six weeks after the birth and made by Kate. Unfortunately, the story ends unhappily. The child died six months later and the cause of death was given as Malnutrition since birth. In the baptism record Kate is described as a Mother's Help (but Domestic House Keeper on the birth certificate) so you'd hope she knew something about looking after babies. I've been struck by how unhappy Kate looks in later photos and I'm guessing this might be part of the reason.

[Ruskie]

Can you post the relevant part of the certificate for us to have a look at?

My first thought was that the £ might be an L but without seeing it, that is just a wild guess.

[cbowley]

In the attachment I've cropped just the important parts to keep the size down as the original PDF is 1.6MB.

[arthurk]

It wouldn't be numbered and have the note in the margin unless it was a mistake, so I'd agree with Ruskie that it was an 'L' and it's been crossed out.

It looks as though the registrar may have started to enter the mother's name instead of the child's in that box. Based on entries at FreeBMD, was this Charles Harold Lough? And if so, does the mother's surname start with a similar 'L'?

[Ruskie]

Yes, it looks like the mistakes were numbered and initialled.

I agree with Arthur that the “£” does look like a capital L crossed out but it is quite far to the left of the box - possibly too far left for a short surname? 

It could be that the registrar asked “name” (meaning name of the child), and Kate thought he was asking for her name, hence the registrar writing “Kate” in that column.

[cbowley]

That would make sense. The mother's surname was Lough so maybe that pound sign was the registrar starting to write her surname in the wrong place. The capital L in the mother's name and informant columns does look like the pound sign without being crossed out.

That just leaves the mystery of the + in the father's name column. I wonder if the registrar started to write the father's name and then realised that they weren't married so he couldn't. In which case I'm looking for a man with a name starting with a vertical line.

I wonder if the registrar was regretting going into work that day.

[arthurk]

Again - started to write something, then crossed it out. (That too is numbered as a correction.)

[majm]

Please do not consider that was a pound sign.  A handwritten pound sign likely needed two horizontal lines through it.  To me, it is a Capital L  that has been written and then excluded from the official registration.

My reasoning:

I am old enough to have been taught to write a pound sign as a capital L  wirh two strokes through the downstroke.  I am young enough to remember how to divide pounds, shillings and pence by pounds, shillings and pence,  and to appreciate a Guinea was a pound plus commission.

JM in NSW Australia just after 1 a.m.

[majm]

Wiki says pound sterling had two strokes.... 

The birth cert is from that era.. . 

JM