Looking through old family history stuff I've just found these old photos of London.  The 12 photos came in a tiny envelope marked thus:

In order to try and see the photos more clearly I loaded them onto our computer. I came to the conclusion that they must have been taken some time in the 1930s as there were no photos showing the results of the bombing which took place during World War II.  

Then I remembered that my great grandfather (Arthur Briggs) did take my Mum on a trip to London, which would have been when she was a teenager.  This must have been before the War as Arthur himself died in 1944.

Considering they're tourist photos of landmarks, which rarely change a great deal, they're quite interesting, so I've reproduced them here.

*although teenagers as such didn't really exist until at least the 1950s, One day they were children and the next they were 'grown up'.

OLD DISEASE NAMES*

THIS IS AN INTERESTING SITE FOR WHEN YOU ARE LOOKING AT OLD DOCUMENTS AND RECORDS AND ARE NOT SURE OF OLD MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY FOR CERTAIN DISEASES GIVEN THEREIN .........

To give some examples

Roseola: Rash seen in the secondary stage of Syphilis.  Roseola sounds so benign but must have been a dreadful state to be in.

But if I heard I was suffering from Chloasma I would be really worried, but it's only a term for 'bownish freckly discolouration of the skin. Mostly seen in pregnancy'.

However, there is one thing I do suffer from occasionally:
Abasia: Hysterical inability to walk or stand (usually induced by G&T in my case!)

* Old Disease Names By Sylvain Cazalet

 http://www.homeoint.org/cazalet/oldnames.htm

found on Facebook


Bonnie Lynmer: has anyone tried using DNA testing - either 23 and Me or Ancestry - to further your research? If so, did you think it was worth the money you spent on the test?

Donna Rutherford: Yes I have tested on all 3 sites. It is worth the money, I would suggest starting at Ancestry if you are a subscriber, from there you can upload to ftDNA and for a small fee transfer the result as if you tested there. Key to all DNA testing is to gain an understanding on how DNA for genealogy works. It is much much more than just ethnicity testing (which is what the media pick up on). You will get hundreds of cousin matches and you will have to figure out how they are all related to you. There are various tools available to help you decipher your results. Also there are many FB groups to help you along. I admin a FB site and I have included the link here. Feel free to join us to find out more.https://www.facebook.com/groups/AncestryUKDNA/?fref=ts

Access over 40,000 genealogy books from this website

From their website:

Researching family histories online is an activity that has begun to come of age. Thousands of family history books and magazines are available to be searched directly from multiple websites. But searching through these websites and combing through the jumble of information they return can be a frustrating, costly, and fruitless process.

The newly launched family history website, GenGophers.com, (https://www.gengophers.com/#/)solves these problems by providing precise and free access to the industry’s most effective online search tools and a growing library of more than 40,000 downloadable family and personal histories, local histories, and genealogy newsletters.

Many searchable book websites make it difficult to restrict searches to genealogy related books. The result is that online searches for names, dates, and places return lists of thousands of potential books completely unrelated to family history. Genealogy Gophers search tools are based on artificial intelligence algorithms and significantly increase the chances of finding relevant search term matches compared to typical word search engines.

In theory, this looks really good, although I'm not sure that it's quite as great as it sounds.  For instance, I keyed in my great grandparents, grandparents and parents and came up with nothing at all for some of them and irrelevant information for others (such as I asked for England and the only name which came up was in Ohio!)
So perhaps this may be really useful for those searching amongst US information.


Family history daily - access over 40,000 genealogy books from:

http://familyhistorydaily.com/genealogy-resources/access-40000-genealogy-books-for-free-with-this-new-service/

Here is a story from the family annals.  I heard about this many years ago when I lived with my uncle and aunt up in Edinburgh but, like most young people, didn't take in the details.

Granddaughter honours Quintinshill crash survivor

My Cousin Heather (left)

WHEN the call came Alexander Thomson didn’t hesitate. The young miner from the West Lothian village of Torphichen downed tools, said goodbye to his family and travelled into Edinburgh and then to Leith to sign up with the 7th Royal Scots.

Just weeks later the 17-year-old and 497 of his fellow troops, full of excitement at what might lie ahead at Gallipoli where they would do their bit for King and country in the Great War, left Leith’s Dalmeny Street drill hall for Larbert station and a train to Liverpool.

He almost never made it. Two hundred and 16 of his fellow soldiers didn’t. They were killed in the worst rail disaster Britain has ever seen at the isolated spot of Quintinshill near Gretna. A further 226 were injured.

For the rest of this fascinating story see: 

http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/granddaughter-honours-quintinshill-crash-survivor-1-3780554

Very pleased to see that our privacy is protected.  I saw this recently and thought it would be a good idea to post on here.

Apparently there are restrictions for ordering birth and and death certificates for less than 50 years ago, see this extract from the GRO website (http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/default.asp). 

A recent query of one of my Facebook pages asked

"I have a variety of family members' wills denoting their personal effects in British pounds. I would like to be able to convert these into Canadian dollars for their particular eras. Does anyone know of a website which would provide this conversion? I've looked and looked but haven't found one yet."

To which the reply was

" If you go onto the National Archives website they have a converter for old money to new in pounds Stirling for today's value and then you should be able to convert to the currency at today's exchange rate"


See: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/default2.asp

Talking of which, I found a stash of old coins this week. they included a Victorian farthing, an Edward VII penny and lots of George V, George VI and some Elizabeth II predecimal coins.  Unfortunately there were no Edward VIII coins which isn't surprising as he wasn't on the throne less than a year (20 January 1936 – 11 December 1936).

Somewhere I have some Georgian pennies and some old silver sixpenses (the ones which were traditionally put into Christmas puddings).