02 April 2011

Findmypast.co.uk, good and bad news

Findmypast.co.uk has added 14,803 more records, these from the 17th century for baptisms at St Dunstan, Stepney. Just over 10,000 are for 1629-1641, and nearly 4,800 for 1652-1656.

The first period is during the reign of Charles I up to near the start of the Civil War. The second is during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. These predate the Great Plague (1665) and Great Fire (1666).

Checking out a sample of the records I found that in addition to the child's name, the father's first name and occupation, the mother's first name, location of residence and age (usually a few days old) is given.

That's the good news.

The bad is that having promised to have a fully digitized individual name searchable database of England and Wales civil registration death records by the end of 2010, April 2011 has arrived and there is still no sign of the company delivering on the commitment. It's a black mark on the company record.

1 comment:

Alison (Vancouver) said...

I've had a couple of customer service issues with them recently too - told an image was good enough when it came up as unavailable. On the other hand, their corrections are coming through very fast. I hope they haven't expanded too fast and taken on too much. I've been very impressed with them to date.