Happy New Year! It will be a momentous one for me, as after 25+ years in my current home and a lifetime in my home-town, I’m on the move.
To commemorate this change, I will be reducing my hourly research fee to £25, for new bookings taken between 1 January to 31 January 2024 only.
So if you want some help with your family history, from an experienced, professionally qualified family historian, with a proven track record, who has been undertaking research for several years across England, Ireland and beyond, now is the time to get in touch.
From a one hour commission to a block of several hours, whether starting out with your family tree or house history, to overcoming a brick wall, or wanting a specific look-up in a West Yorkshire local archive or local studies library, I can be contacted via email at: pasttopresentgenealogy@btinternet.com
For more details about my fees and services, plus a few of many testimonials from clients, please click here.
For more information about my background and family history qualifications and experience, click here.
And my Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA) profile can be found found here.
The government is proposing to destroy millions of wills going back to the 1800s, thus making the original paper documents unavailable to historians & genealogists. These are the wills held by HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS), dating back to 1858 when the Principal Registry was established.
Unsurprisingly though, this is not the spin the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) put on it when their 10-week consultation was announced on 15 December 2023.
Pitching the proposals at genealogists and historians, they say they will digitise these documents making access easier. Once the documents are digitised, the original paper documents will be destroyed – the proposal is to retain these original copies for 25 years only. They estimate this will save storage costs currently estimated to be around £4.5m per annum. Although it is unclear exactly what costings have been done, including the costs around digitisation, digital storage and keeping up-to-date with technology changes.
However, they are proposing retaining some documents: the original wills of famous and historic figures would be exempted from destruction.
As a clarification point, the documents subject to destruction are not the registered copies of wills obtained from the Probate Search Service website. The original will may differ from these registered copies, importantly containing the original signatures of testator and witnesses. These, as family historians know, can provide an important comparator in identifying/proving signatures of the individuals in other records. Currently you are able to request – and should legally be supplied – the original will. It is these originals which are earmarked for destruction.
What’s the problem?
Well, even from my initial read-through I can think of many.
Firstly, destroying key historic documents such as these is total madness. Once destroyed, that’s it. And the government has form here, even in recent years. Remember the destruction of the Windrush Landing Cards? If you read my post about that debacle, you can see echoes of that in these latest proposals. It can be found here.
Secondly, family historians are well aware of issues around digitisation. How many digitised documents have been incorrectly scanned, for example sections chopped off, failure to scan both sides, even missing out pages, or skipping complete sections. And on the subject of this in relation to wills, I’ve had the wrong soldiers’ will supplied because of a scanning issue. The reply I eventually got from HMCTS when, after months of emails and fobbing off, they finally acknowledged the problem, was:
… we are looking at rescanning the affected soldier’s wills and will correct yours in due time…
From this reply it appears mine was not a one-off issue. It seems multiple wills were affected by scanning problems. I did eventually get the correct will. But if the original document had been destroyed this would have been impossible.
Thirdly, and linked to this, there is the long-term viability of digital documents and new technology. Their preservation and longevity is a whole new can of worms. Remember floppy disks? Betamax and VHS? Anyone bought a new laptop of late, with a CD DVD drive? Will USB ports and sticks be consistent? What about deterioration of digital documents? Digital preservation is not one-off and cost-free. And what about cyber attack? The British Library is still suffering major technology outages weeks after they fell victim to one, and anticipate disruption to some services will last for several months to come.
The MoJ is clearly aware of the possible pitfalls of the digitisation process, and potential survival implications of this technology, as evidenced by their proposals around the retention of original wills of the famous. If the technology is so wonderful, why propose this exemption? Is this more around the furore which would ensue if it came to light these particular high-profile documents were incorrectly digitised, or there was a later digital failure, and then all was lost because they had destroyed the originals?
Which leads me onto my fourth point, and one of my major bugbears. My family history is devoid of the rich and famous. But the lives of my ancestors mean more to me than those categorised as such. The majority of people being researched by many family historians will also fall outside this famous category – whatever the eventual criteria for this is, as the MoJ have still to set it. I would argue history – local, social and family – is for many more about the lives of ordinary people, than the rich and famous. From an individual family history basis, to broader social history, local history or one-place studies, wills are an integral building block. It is this history which is more relatable to ordinary people. It is this history which adds richness and colour and context. But the MoJ are only focused on those deemed famous. Their proposals infer the wills of everyday people do not matter. It also ignores the fact that history evolves. Someone not deemed famous when they died, or even 25 years after probate, could – as history is reevaluated – suddenly be recognised as extremely historically valuable. But by then it is too late to retain their original will.
Final point, if one of MoJ’s selling points for this change is the benefit to historians and family history researchers, I would be interested to know why the MoJ, in their key list of 22 bodies being sent a copy of the consultation, fails to include the Society of Genealogists, the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives, the Family History Federation or the Register of Qualified Genealogists.
That being said, they do say responses are welcomed from anyone with an interest in or views on the subject covered by their paper. The full document is here.
I would urge anyone who values history and family history to respond to the consultation, which closes on 23 February 2024. The address for consultation responses is:
Will Storage consultation Ministry of Justice Civil Justice and Law Division, Postpoint 5.25 102 Petty France London SW1H 9AJ
This is my regular look back at the posts added to the Batley St Mary of the Angels One-Place Study during the previous month. The November 2023 monthly update contains the list of all the St Mary’s posts to date, including links to them, with this month’s new and updated posts signposted.
Batley St Mary of the Angels
If you want to know the background, and what is involved in a one-place study, click here. Otherwise read on, to discover a wealth of parish, parishioner and wider local Batley history.
Four new posts were added during November 2023, bringing the total number of study posts to 283. Four other posts were updated. The new additions were four weekly newspaper pages for November 1917. I have accordingly updated the surname index to these During This Week newspaper pieces, so you can easily identify newspaper snippets relevant to your family. This is one of the updated posts.
More men who served and survived the First World War have been identified and are included in that section. This is the second updated post.
The final two updates relate to the identification of another Great War man omitted from the church War Memorial. Accordingly, his name has been added to the section covering Biographies: Men Associated with St Mary’s Who Died but Who Are Not on the Memorial, and his biography will follow in due course. The War Memorial Chronology of Deaths section has also been updated to include him.
Below is the full list of pages to date. I have annotated the *NEW* and *UPDATED* ones, so you can easily pick these out. Click on the link and it will take you straight to the relevant page.
Finally, if you do have any information about, or photos of, parishioners from the period of the First World War please do get in touch. It does not have to be War Memorial men. It could be those who served and survived, or indeed any other men, women and children from the parish.
I would also be interested in information about, and photos of, those parishioners who were killed in World War Two, or others from the parish who undertook any war service and survived. This can be as broad as serving in the military, or work in munitions factories, the Land Army, even taking in refugees. This is an area I’m looking to develop in the future.
Postscript: I want to say a big thank you for the donations already received to keep this website going. They really do help.
The website has always been free to use, and I want to continue this policy in the future. However, it does cost me money to operate – from undertaking the research to website hosting costs. In the current difficult economic climate I do have to regularly consider if I can afford to continue running it as a free resource.
If you have enjoyed reading the various pieces, and would like to make a donation towards keeping the website up and running in its current open access format, it would be very much appreciated.
Please click 👉🏻here👈🏻 to be taken to the PayPal donation link. By making a donation you will be helping to keep the website online and freely available for all.
Past To Present Genealogy 