I've been looking for baptism records for some family members in St. Mary Hanwell in the borough of Ealing. They are there on Ancestry and I was excited - OK don't be alarmed - as these in the 1790's, I like to save copies of these documents. 1799 had about a dozen or so baptisms all nice and neat but no dates apart ftom the year - 1799. Was I peeved?
I think it's a bit unfair to blame the poor vicar! It looks as if some catastrophe has befallen the register. In some places the right-hand side of the page is missing entirely, perhaps eaten away by fire or rot. On the undamaged parts of pages you can see the month and day clearly written on that side of the page. Unless the Bishop's transcript has survived you may have to be satisfied with just the year of baptism . . . though you can narrow it down a little: on image 14 of 60 on Ancestry, it seems to be entries between April and June 1799 which are worst affected.
My attempt at a little 'tongue-in-cheek' humour has obviously been perceived as unfair and so I apologise to both the forum and rhe poor vicar. For some unknown reason I am having problems viewing images - it takes at least 5 attempts before I get anything other than a full black page on my monitor. Thank you for pointing it out about the other pages in the register
Colin, my sense-of-humour detector was obviously not functioning when I posted at 4.52 a.m., so I assumed that your thread title was a serious question. Sorry. Also I should have put in a smiley to let you know I was only teasing you about being unfair to the vicar. That's what comes of trying to answer questions when I should still be asleep.
The dawn gets earlier every day and the gulls are getting noisier but not up quite as early as you Jane!
At 4:52 am I am often still awake so I am very envious of someone who can get a reasonable amount of sleep and be awake again by then!
