Pension record Quandary

[RaySearching]

Here is what I have on Gunner Gill

GILL JAMES

Gunner JAMES GILL

67583 113 Bty 25 Bde Royal Field Artillery

James was wounded in action and died of his wounds on the 18th May 1918

He was the son of Mary Hobson previously Gill and the stepson of James Hobson

James can be found on the 1901 census residing with his mother, stepfather and siblings John and Mary at 57 Lloyd Street Middlesbrough

The register of soldiers effect list his mother Mary Hobson and brother John as the legatee of his effects

Born 1889 Middlesbrough enlisted Norwich Norfolk

PERNES MILITARY CEMETERY

 

Soldiers effects

 

However 

The pension records  list his mother Mary Hobson as his widow  (erroneously) ?  I assume mistakes were made or the details entered on the wrong card

His mother should have received a dependents pension not a "widows" 

 

The pension records were accessed through The Western Front association on Ancestry

however one does not be able to add a correction when accessing the records through the WFA or through Ancestry "without a Fold 3 Account " 

is this correct ?

 

clicking on the add a correction link in the records and adding my WFA log in details or my Ancestry log in details (I do not have a fold 3 account)

will not allow me to make a correction ( the email or password did not match our record)

 

Ray

 

Images are from Ancestry

[ss002d6252]

I can see what you mean Ray. The ledger itself is a Widows ledger that the Ministry of Pension have incorrectly used so I suspect that there will be no relevant correction that it would let you make (most corrections that Ancestry does allow are simply transcription corrections). @David Tattersfield may be best placed I think in respect of this.

Craig

[RaySearching]

Thanks for the reply Craig

The point I was trying to make there is a field to add comments on the record  

But I believe this is only accessible if you have a fold 3 account.  this appears not  to be accessible if you are accessing the records on Ancestry  through the W.F.A

 

 

Ray

[PRC]

Ray,

 

Apologies in advance if this isn't pertinent to your point.

 

When Fold3 recently had a free weekend I must admit I rather gorged, looking at quite a lot of records. However, being a public spirited soul, when I came across mis-transcriptions I tried to correct them by adding a comment. What I was finding was that for some records the comments option wasn't there or I got a message that it wasn't available for that record. At first I thought I was going mad and kept checking records I had commented on to see how I had done it. There was no obvious reason to my mind of why some records allowed commenting and others didn't, but sadly the researching frenzy was on me and totally suppressed any desire on my part to get to the bottom of it.

 

My observation is - does this occur with every pension ledger card you access through WFA or is James Gills' mother the first occasion you have noticed it.

 

Cheers,

Peter

[RaySearching]

Peter

I have been updating my database with the information from the pension records

I have been accessing the records through the WFA only

maybe as i am accessing the records through a third party one is not permitted to add comments 

as you accessed the records through Ancestry on the free weekend direct this is may be the reason you were permitted to add comments on a number of occasions

Pure speculation of course 

 

I had previously come across a number of transcription errors which i tried to correct but give up as I seemed to be unable to add comments to the record

so as previously stated I give up 

Regards Ray

 

[David Tattersfield]

Hello Ray

 

Thanks for this. There are two separate issues here, I think, being: (1) the incorrect facts you've highlighted and (2) correction of the database.

 

In respect of (1) on the face of it, unless a widow comes along whose details are identical to those on the ledger (NB this is a ledger not a card - this may seem a pedantic point but with the release of cards in the near future I think it is important to note the difference for reasons I won't go into right now) shown in your above post, then it would seem that the Ministry of Pensions got their wires crossed here. However, the transcription of the information by Ancestry seems to be correct (viz., extracting the information as recorded and adding it to the searchable fields).

In respect of point (2), therefore I'm not sure that there's mileage in attempting to 'correct' this. What it is possible to do though (for those with a Fold3 account) is to add an annotation to a record. I have just done this. by noting that 'Mary Hobson is thought to be the mother rather than the widow'. I don't know at this stage how quickly this will appear or if it will be confined to Fold 3 users as opposed to WFA library users.

 

I'd add that WFA library users do not have the ability to correct or annotate records in this way. I'd agree that this would be useful but I doubt that this will be possible. I will, however, ask the question of my Ancestry contact. 

 

PS the annotation I've added has updated to both Fold 3 and the WFA library immediately. 

 

Regards

 

David

Edited 5 July , 2019 by David Tattersfield

[David Tattersfield]

12 hours ago, PRC said:

Ray,

 

Apologies in advance if this isn't pertinent to your point.

 

When Fold3 recently had a free weekend I must admit I rather gorged, looking at quite a lot of records. However, being a public spirited soul, when I came across mis-transcriptions I tried to correct them by adding a comment. What I was finding was that for some records the comments option wasn't there or I got a message that it wasn't available for that record. At first I thought I was going mad and kept checking records I had commented on to see how I had done it. There was no obvious reason to my mind of why some records allowed commenting and others didn't, but sadly the researching frenzy was on me and totally suppressed any desire on my part to get to the bottom of it.

 

My observation is - does this occur with every pension ledger card you access through WFA or is James Gills' mother the first occasion you have noticed it.

 

Cheers,

Peter

 

Peter - thanks for this. It would be interesting to analyse the issue you have highlighted here. If you are able to identify what worked and didn't work, I'll pass this along to Ancestry. The side point here is of course that 'free weekend' users of Fold 3 can - on the face of it - add corrections / notations to records. 

[David Tattersfield]

Further to the above posts, I've 'fished out' the CARD for James Gill (this from the soon-to-be published set)

 

This is attached to this post. From this, we can see that the MoP realised they'd made a mistake (from the line on the bottom of the card). In addition a 'correct' pension file was seemingly opened under reference 11/D/95004.

 

I guess @ss002d6252 (Craig) may find this of particular interest? 

 

Regards

 

David

[RaySearching]

David 

Thank you for your comprehensive reply's  

and for taking the trouble to fish out the card  which explains the error and my query

very much appreciated

 

Regards Ray 

[ss002d6252]

1 hour ago, David Tattersfield said:

Further to the above posts, I've 'fished out' the CARD for James Gill (this from the soon-to-be published set)

 

This is attached to this post. From this, we can see that the MoP realised they'd made a mistake (from the line on the bottom of the card). In addition a 'correct' pension file was seemingly opened under reference 11/D/95004.

 

I guess @ss002d6252 (Craig) may find this of particular interest? 

 

Regards

 

David

 

Thanks David, it is,

Craig