Genealogy Chat

You're exactly right Lynski. The images are scanned by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) which basically looks at shapes on the paper and tries to convert them to characters. Bearing in mind that some of these papers are very old and the print isn't terribly clear that's how it all goes pear-shaped.

This method is used because they can OCR scan very quickly, but at a price. It would be almost humanly impossible to manually transcribe and index every edition of every newspaper.

Although it's really frustrating at times I'm still thankful that I can at least see (some of) these old articles.

I am pretty sure I read somewhere that the newspapers are badly transcribed because it is done by a machine that reads it??

Here's another example -

IIIRTI IS, MARRIA6ES. &c. '<• mxrr inttrt mmticrtkirtks, *turriu.,tM,ur JtaUj •/•on u lonymois aitfuuritv, un!r%» V V jhoJ. BIRTHS. Lately,

William Millington. of this citj, aged S-i. in hi* 79th ynr, Mr. Robert Barber, Wem A man of the stricte-t integrity, ai.d highly and deservedly respected all who knew him. I7ih at VenUn.r, ls!e of Wight, aired sincerely lamented those who knew his qualities

WHY WAS THAT SO BADLY TRANSCRIBED IN THE FIRST PLACE

Sadly no...lolol

Susan with numbers found newspaper reports of three arrests he made which made fascinating reading...Literally "it's a fair cop governor, I was drunk on port when I did it"

It's scary to think he was policing very near the Ripper murders at the time they were happening.

Your welcome Sue!

So was it the right man?

Thanks for that :-D

I was truly confused. That was the very first search on GR as I use every other site available but thought I might find GT. Grandpa in more news reports on here.

Sue

.. and you can read the full report of the trial for free on the Old Bailey on-line site.

Hope this link works
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=def1-156-18980207&div=t18980207-156#highlight

This is what you would have seen:

"At the North London Police Court yesterday George Chamberlain, 23, a labourer, was charged with wounding PC 302Y at St John's Road, Holloway on the night of October 4th 1896.
Prosecutor, in his evidence, stated that after having twice warned Chamberlain, who was with his brother Charles and a man called George, and was creating a disturbance, he was attacked by them and stabbed about the head and neck. He became unconscious and was on the sick list for seven weeks. Prisoner was committed for trial".

The images are always OK, it's the OCR scanning that is rubbish. No wonder there are articles that we know exist but don't come up in searches!

Of course if it had been an Australian news item on Trove you could have seen the original and corrected it too.
For free ....... :-S

ARHH SUE WHY NOT
MAY HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FILL IN THE MISSING LINKS
LOL

Morning Post London, England

18 Jan 1898


POLICE-CONSTABLE STABBED

POLICE-CONSTABLE STABBED. PhvL^'i or & Police Court ycterday Georta SaKSfsSEft! £ £__ !?*?!• £* . Ur ha » ln - twice warned Cliamb*rlain.Yylio. with hi. brother Charles and a man norn^C^S. wS 2551 v* *&**>***+ he wo. attacked by Z3 stabbed about the lead
View article Type: Article

I didn't pay to view that one.

Sue