Which are the correct Playle records?
QCharles Francis William Playle was baptised on 31 July 1910 at St Paul’s, Lower Homerton. His parents were Charles and Mary Ann Playle. On the same day, there was a baptism for an Ellen Mary Ann Elizabeth Playle, with parents Charles William and Mary Ann Playle. However, according to the General Register O ce (GRO) register, this child’s mother was Ellen Cave and her father was Francis Playle. What is going on?
Jan Pollard
AEvery document, no matter how official, has the potential to contain misleading or incorrect information (accidentally or not), so it is important to look for confirmation from other sources, as you have done, before accepting them as correct.
The register of baptisms at St Paul’s, Homerton, does show two Playle children, both with parents Charles and Mary Ann being baptised on the same day in i 1910. However, the abode and the t occupation of the father on the t two entries are different.
You have checked the birthindex entries in the GRO’s index at a https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/ content/certificates/indexes_ search.asp, and (although certificates should always be obtained as confirmation) it does seem that the children had different parents. There is also a death registration for the infant Charles FW Playle in Hackney in early 1911, while Ellen Playle is in the 1911 census aged one, with parents Francis and Ellen.
Marriage registers were completed during a wedding ceremony, but there was no such requirement for baptism or burial registers. In many parishes they were completed as an occasional task – by the vicar, curate or parish clerk – and the information might be taken from notes kept in a diary or a ‘parish day book’.
We must be careful when dismissing awkward evidence as ‘errors’, but it’s not difficult to imagine a busy clerk copying information into the register and inadvertently repeating the parents’ details for the two Playle children baptised on the same day. Antony Marr