It's a Heatwave - Official. Keeping my mind busy ... or overdoing it?

I just had a very surreal experience with Blogger ... all my fonts and tools were invisible when I opened a new blank page to start writing ... maybe the heat is affecting the web too?  After I cut and pasted a snip of code from a previous blog to get the tags for the font right it suddenly popped back to the proper view of the writing page.  Ooh-er!

Anyway, dodgy IT aside, things are hot and sticky here in Barnsley.  The temperature has stayed in the high 20s since last Sunday and although it's great for drying my washing and lovely for the people who have pools or can get to the beach for the rest of us it is just a bit too warm I'm afraid. 

I'm currently feeling very twitchy, I can't settle to watch television with the OH, I keep thinking there's something I should be doing.  I've had a busy day, a first visit ever to a U3A meeting (it was local history, so not that strange really, quite familiar actually - but definitely a tick for a first visit to the community centre at Burton Grange) followed by a quick trip around Iceland (which has a new branch in Lundwood, the bit on the other side of the road from Burton Grange).  This afternoon I was kept busy typing up the minutes from a CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) meeting we (the OH and I) attended on Saturday, helping a friend with a family history query (what is the history of the chapel in Buckley Street in Barnsley?), doing my washing and hanging it out, preparing the meal for this evening, and doing some advance planning for our summer break.

Some people take a holiday over the summer, the OH and I go to London for a fortnight and work as volunteers at the Great British Beer Festival - the biggest pub in Britain for five days!  Having been sent some advance information I've been drafting my tannoy (public announcements to the visitors) script for the sessions when we are open to the public.  I did at one point feel the whole afternoon was just too full of stuff that I needed to get on with and had to take a step back and have an ice cream! 

Now I don't know what to do - well, I do - write a blog post about why I think I'm so twitchy!

My cat, who as you know if you've read many of my previous posts, likes keeping me awake at nights, has decided to spend twenty-four hours outside, preferably with as much of her body as possible spread out on a cool piece of concrete or dry soil.  This, theoretically, means that I should be sleeping better however I woke as usual several times in the night and at 4am my mind was buzzing so much I wrote down what I was thinking in a attempt to empty my mind and get back to sleep.  Even so it took an hour, a pain killer (painful knees and ankles last night - probably after the gardening at my mum's), and a several games of Spider Solitaire before I dropped off again.

What was I thinking?  Well my notes (which are a bit scribbly and hard to read now, nearly 18 hours later) say that I was particularly enjoying the feel of the fresh clean sheets (the OH and I made the bed up when we came home from my mum's), that the cat was out, so I didn't need to worry about her, and that by 4:30am it was beginning to be daylight again.  Several cocks were crowing over in the allotments behind our house and a pigeon was joining in the chorus.  That the pain in my left knee and the pain in my right ankle were the worst, however the ache in both my shoulders was annoying too.  That I was a bit worried about going to the U3A meeting by myself, or oversleeping and being late for it.  That I was upset about having to ask the OH for the £1 for the sub for the meeting (he did give me £2, so I have some change for the Cudworth meeting on Wednesday).  That today's tea (that's our evening meal, when the OH gets home from work) will be lentil risotto - because we need to go shopping and the cupboards are a bit bare.  That on the bright side it is the OH's pay day today - so we can afford to go shopping soon. All my money from my mum this month is going on my Ancestry subscription which is due at the end of the month.  I know it sounds like a luxury, but I use it so much ... I've cut back on everything else, honest. 

I wrote that it was nice to find out on Saturday (whilst at a meeting in a very hot attic in Lincoln) that a friend reads my blog posts and follows me on Twitter so she doesn't miss any.  But that it was sad that I had to announce that I need to give up something that's been important in my life for the last twenty-one years because of my health. 

And I squeezed in at the bottom of the page (after I'd given up trying to sleep and gone to make toast and see if the cat wanted to come in to keep me company) that the cat likes toast crumbs, even more than the chicken scraps we'd fetched from my mum's for her.  Daft animal!

I think I'm trying to do too much again, I need to pace myself, slooooowwww down, take my time - especially in this heat.  But how do I do that?  Whenever I stop doing I think I'm neglecting something that needs to be done ... tomorrow I might go to the Archives (at least it's cool in there) and on Wednesday it's the Cudworth History Group and on Thursday the Archives again, Friday is my daughter's graduation (I'm sooooo proud!) and at the weekend another trip to my mum's. 

Too busy ... must slow down ...

Digitised Barnsley Chronicle coming soon to Barnsley Archives (and the tragic deaths of Edward Hayes aged three and Jeremiah Moderate aged sixteen)

The big question when I enter the Archives at the moment is, "Has the Barnsley Chronicle arrived yet?"  Since the re-opening as part of Experience Barnsley a couple of weeks ago we have been eagerly awaiting the chance to view the full collection of the Barnsley Chronicle newspaper in its new format.

Word has been going around the local and family history communities of Barnsley and the message is beginning to get back to me via unexpected routes ... "Did you know ...?", well yes I did and do and I can't wait!! 

Since I moved to Barnsley about ten years ago and started researching the OH's family history and developing a knowledge of Barnsley history in general (the Aspects of Barnsley series of books are really good for getting to know the place) I have used the Barnsley Chronicle on microfilm to search for more detail on family news and events.

Here's a particularly harrowing example from 1924:
 

Barnsley Chronicle 9 August 1924 (from Barnsley Archives)

"Swallowed a Halfpenny

Singular Death of a Monk Bretton Child
 
At the Barnsley West Riding Police Court on Tuesday morning Mr C J Haworth (District Coroner), held an inquiry into the death of Edward Hayes (3), son of the late James Hayes and Mrs Benson of 12, Chapel Street, Monk Bretton, who died on Saturday after swallowing a halfpenny.
Thomas Edward Benson, step-father of deceased said that when he went home on Saturday afternoon he found the child on a couch.  Artificial respiration was being applied, but the child died shortly afterwards.

Ernest Schofield, miner, 10 Chapel Street, Monk Bretton, said that at about 3 o'clock on Saturday afternoon he saw deceased in the street in the arms of a man named Noah Clarke.  His face was blue and he appeared to be choking.  Witness say a halfpenny come from the child's mouth and fall on the ground.

Noah Clarke, 14 Chapel Street, Monk Bretton, said he saw the child choking in the street and picked him up.  He hit him on the back and according to the previous witness it was then that the halfpenny dropped out of the child's mouth.

Dr E Walsh of Cudworth said when he arrived the child was dead.  He made a post mortem examination and found no trace of injury or disease.  In his opinion, taking into account the evidence he had heard, the cause of death was suffocation.

Benson, re-called, said he gave the child a penny on Saturday and he brought home "spice", having a halfpenny change.

The Coroner, recording a verdict that "the child died through misadventure from suffocation by swallowing a halfpenny whilst at play", remarked that what Clarke did was the best thing possible.  One would have thought after this that the child would have come round, but unfortunately it did not do so."
 
Notice how the cutting is crossed through by vertical lines - these are scratches on the microfilm from running it through the readers hundreds of times.  The thicker ones almost obscure some of the words.  I hope that the new digitised version will be a much clearer copy, we have been told that it will be searchable, however this does depend of the capability of the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) used and the condition of the images that are scanned by the software.

Here's an example, from the newspapers on Find My Past (and the British Newspaper Archive) of what results you get from a scan of a poor image:

of Mr. Jeremiah Moderate, OI bort tim e d* * tfS 1< and has only been employed; a ve ved & Bridge, was as soon as P O9 ? bad * mary, where it was found tna V. bc dy. ™ injured in the lower part oi recovery is entertained.

 

Now admittedly the name of my relative, Jeremiah Moderate, is clear - I wouldn't have found the reference if it hadn't have been - however the rest of the item is completely mangled.  It should read something like this ...
 

"of Mr. Jeremiah Moderate, of Abbey Town, Carlisle, and has only been employed a short time at Apperley Bridge, was as soon as possible conveyed to Leeds Infirmary, where it was found that he had been very seriously injured in the lower part of the body. No hope of his recovery is entertained."

 

When we look at the actual image we can see why the poor OCR may have occurred - the page was not laid flat and the letters to the right are warped out of shape.  



Manchester Evening News 18 July 1885 (from Find My Past)

Similar problems with the OCR occur if the page is damaged or creased, or if the ink has been smudged.  And old style fonts ... ah well, although I would be the first to admit that the ability of OCR to recognise printed words has come on in leaps and bounds since I first used it over fifteen years ago, the programs still have trouble with excessive serifs on fonts - that's the little squiggly bits at the top and bottom of letters - plus in the really old newspapers a letter 's' looks like a letter 'f' - and there's not a lot you can do about that!

Newcastle Courant 30 May 1778 (from British Newspaper Archive)

"Last week, at Sunderland, Mr John Elstob, a Landwaiter in the Customs there, to Miss Hen. Brown, daughter of Mr Nicholas Brown of the Customhouse in that port; a young lady possessed of many valuable accomplishments, with a handsome fortune."

becomes in the search text,

 

"SundeVknd, Mr JohnElftob, ?? in the Cuftoms then to Mifs Hen. Brown, daughter of Mr Nicholas Brown of the Ctiftomhoufe tn dittfort; a young Lady ?? of many valuable ?? with a handfome ..."

 

So let's cross our fingers that the new digitisation of the Barnsley Chronicle will avoid all these pitfalls and people will be turning up in droves to discover their ancestors' goings on!  Don't forget to make a booking - it could get very busy!