SHORT TALKS BY THE COMMITTEE

Bad weather conditions & a long travelling distance caused our speaker to cancel his talk to the Society at our February meeting.
In spite of snow & the bitterly cold night about 35 people listened to talks given by Bridget our chairperson, & members of the committee who were ‘encouraged’ by Bridget to produce 10 minute talks at the last moment. Bridget started the evening off by recalling the misdemeanours of her family in the past & how Scottish Church law was applied to these wrongdoings, & how the wrongdoers evaded their penance. She also spoke of adoption & the way to find adoption papers. She then took us on a journey by an 8seater plane to North Ronaldsy in the Orkney Isles. It was fascinating to hear how she & Peter arrived on the island as strangers & how they left with most of the inhabitants, some found to be relatives, waving them off from the cow field which acted as the airport.
Barbara then gave a glimpse into the treatments of illnesses & accidents learned from her Grandmother whilst living with her. She read a recipe dated 1802 (from the newly acquired reference library book ‘Medicine in Wisbech & the Fens 1700 onwards’) for a poultice for sore legs, made with lots of natural herbs, flowers, leaves & oils. Barbara spoke of treatments, which could only have worked by the placebo effect & some medications, which were quite dangerous but ‘did the job’. She also mentioned today’s versions of some of the old treatments. Her talk was followed by the refreshment break & several members came & spoke to Barbara about their own recollections of grandma’s treatments.
Anita caused many laughs with her light – hearted talk on Murphy’s Law for genealogists, (akin to Sod’s law in every day life) examples of which most researchers have met up with. She spoke of the ink used in family bibles to record family events to be the only ink that fades beyond legibility –how the page you want to research on the web is smudged & unreadable when the pages on either side are crystal clear – how your favourite uncle never wrote anything down because he had a memory like a filing cabinet but unfortunately died the week before you were going to visit him to ask about family. How papers that would have answered that long researched question had been burned & how some records searched for were proved to be incorrect.
As most of us have come across such stumbling blocks we fully appreciated Anita’s talk & could be led to believe that some things are not to be known!
Peter then spoke of Witches in the Fens. There seemed to very few in Cambridgeshire, the last one known possibly being at Ramsey. The audience did not know of any witches but we suppose there were some ‘good & bad’.
[Barbara Holmes]