South Leith burials index on SP - problems and a plea

jennyblain · Post by **jennyblain** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 12:33 pm

I had printed various index searches from SP, and used them when I had the chance to look at some films of burials in South Leith burial ground. While skimming through, I spotted a couple of names that should have been in my index search results but weren't: a Philp entry, and three Bells.

Phil*p*
18/11/1739 William Philp son to Alexander, 11 months.

Bell
19/7/1751 Janet Bell dau to William Bell porter.
-/6/1767 Elizabeth -- widow of William Bell Cooper in Leith, aged upwards of 60 years.
26/7/1784 Janet Bell spouse to John Anderson Porter in Leith...

I've contacted SP and the very kind woman there who emailed me back has found more! The index has quite a few items missing...

She has contacted the department who deal with indexes, but they tell her they can't make corrections just now.

So thought I should pass this along in case anybody else is searching in this area.

In particular (along with earlier Philps), I was trying to search for James Philp or Philip, son of John, born in 1779 - to see if this James died in childhood. I checked every item for James Phil*p* - not him. But he may have been there and not indexed. (Or of course he may have died but the burial not been registered - his father, though, was a freeman tailor holding various offices in the tailors' society, so deaths are likely to have been registered. Two later children from this family died young and are buried in the tailors' ground.)

But if anybody happens to be looking through pages from the South Leith burials and happens to spot him... please let me know... [-o<
Jenny

Post by **SarahND** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:55 am

Thanks for the heads-up, Jenny. That gives me hope that some South Leith deaths I was looking for and not finding may actually be there. Did you look at the films at the ScotlandsPeople Centre in Edinburgh?

Regards,
Sarah

jennyblain · Post by **jennyblain** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:29 am

Hi Sarah,
It would depend on the date - there are some years for which burials information is pretty scant anyway, if I remember correctly around the early 1760s and 1771. There's one year in which the clerk put in a statement to say it wasn't his fault because burials hadn't been notified to him! So while some are missing from the index, some others are missing entirely from the register...

For most years, though, the register looks pretty good.
I wasn't at the SP centre, alas - I managed to get the LDS centre in Sheffield to order in some films for me. But then they look ages to arrive (weeks, months) and though I 'renewed' the key ones once they were here, the centre then closed for the whole of August and they needed to be sent back so I couldn't renew them again... I did have a chance to go through the late 18th century entries a few times, but not to read and transcribe in the detail I would have wished.

(Work, of course, meant that I could only get there a few times during the period the films were in.)

Good luck!
Jenny

Post by **SarahND** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:36 am

Thanks, Jenny. I'll be looking a bit later, some time between 1820 and 1841 in the black hole before the first census

Of course, if that is successful, then I may well be going backwards from there as well.

I'll let you know if any Philps jump out at me

Regards,
Sarah

jennyblain · Post by **jennyblain** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 4:21 pm

Ah - alas the SL kirkyard burial registers as published by both SP and LDS stop at December 1819. But, there seem to be later records at NAS - so I'm going to try to get there, possibly in November when there's a week's break from teaching.
Jenny

Post by **SarahND** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 4:55 pm

jennyblain wrote: But, there seem to be later records at NAS - so I'm going to try to get there, possibly in November when there's a week's break from teaching.

If you're there the first week in November, we can fight over them

Hoping to get there myself!

Regards,
Sarah