14 February 2019

Ancestry adds Poor Law Hospital Admissions and Discharges for London

If you go to the Ancestry catalog today and sort by Date Updated the first few entries are intriguing. 

As usual there's no information about whether they're major or minor updates. Was a whole new year added to the Ontario records or where a few spelling errors corrected? Is it the same for the London records? Would it be worthwhile or a waste of time running previously unsuccessful searches?

Then there's the title London, England, Poor Law Hospital Admissions and Discharges, 1842-1918 indicated as NEW, but with zero records!

Prompted by a blog post from Claire Santry, who must have an inside source, there are in fact not zero but "nearly 300,000 records of the elderly and chronically ill – many of them Irish – receiving medical relief in infirmaries attached to workhouses."

Claire also reported the London Poor Law, Selected Removal and Settlement Records, 1698-1930 collection has 5,500 additional entries with details of settlement and removals in the Bethnal Green, Hackney, Poplar, Shoreditch, and Stepney areas of London's East End.

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