Good to see you Greensleeves
Your link is helpful waynenort, thank you
I wasn't aware of Ann Bassett's story and as an English person, having seen the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid many years ago is my frame of reference
Well I printed out the shorthand, numbered the lines for ease of reference but haven't really come up with much of a transcription.
The shorthand does resemble Pitman New Era which I learnt in 1979/80, this system has been around since 1922. It would be helpful to know things like:
a) what was the date of this trial? 1911 seems to be mentioned so presumably after then.
b) is this a random page from the trial as maybe to start with the first page would be simpler? How many pages are there?
c) it looks like there are a couple of words written in scribbly longhand, on lines 8 and 10 - can anyone with knowledge of the case, area or people involved hazard a guess at what these might say? E.g. Nastaley??
The most complete line I can guess at is the second one "we not personally present when they pass down most of the time". The second half of line 11 might read "I am living in fear at the moment". Line 12 possibly mentions "live stock and territory". The outline before 1911 appears to be March.
Once a writer has learnt the rules of how the phonetics are captured they tend to develop their own short forms for words that appear regularly in what they're recording so it's rarely straightforward to transcribe another person's shorthand, I used to struggle enough with my own at times!!
Sorry I can't give any more transcription than that, maybe it's an earlier version of Pitman shorthand than I learnt?
Maybe Greensleeves will be more successful
Good luck with your research.
Heather
