Question about the new Debrett's database

[bx...@yahoo.com]

For any of you who are subscribers, I have a question.

How do you look up members of the Royal Family in the database?  I've tried inserting terms like "York", "Wessex", "Sussex", "Kent" and "Gloucester" in the search bar and nothing comes up.

I am specifically looking for the same format for those titles as all of the other titles in the database.

Thanks for your help.

Brooke

[Henry W]

I have tried looking for families closely related to the Royal Family as I noticed that articles of other titles are often linked from a title. I went to the BROOKSBANK baronets, where of course Jack's marriage to HRH Princess Eugenie is recorded, but ROYAL FAMILY is not a link (similar for the ASHCOMBE barons).  I finally got lucky with the SPENCER earls which lists under SISTER DECEASED the late Princess of Wales, formerly Lady Diana Spencer.  Here ROYAL FAMILY is a link, but merely goes to a generic page on the Debrett's website, not something we would expect in the former print editions.

When I look at previous print editions of Debrett's, the Royal Family are not included in the Peerage section, but rather are part of the first 100 or so pages that cover various things.  Hopefully this is something Debrett's will add in due course.

Looking through the database it is not as up-to-date as some of the information posted here.  Whilst I accept that some of my postings based on what I have found on social media should not necessarily be taken as definitive (though I tend to only post when I am relatively certain), some of our finds from the GRO are not reflected and several people who we can prove are deceased are still shown as living, e.g. Aileen CONSTANT (nee WILSON, of the WILSON baronets [1906]) is shown as living despite clear evidence that she died in 1995, and Jacqueline HOPE (of the LINLITHGOW marquesses) is shown living despite dying in 2015.  I initially wondered if Debrett's simply don't monitor our messages (surely not!!), but then they do seem to have kept up with some births/deaths that we uncovered.  Maybe I should apply for a job with them!

Other things I have noticed: extinct titles that would be listed in print editions as they had close family of previous holders still living cannot be found in the search, but sometimes you can find your way in another route (e.g. you cannot search for Earl of AVON, but if you go to Duke of MARLBOROUGH, you can find a link to the extinct title via Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, later Countess of AVON.)  Some dormant titles are listed in the search (e.g. POWER [1836] baronets), but not others (WYVILL baronets)

After finding the AVON page I realised that the way the page URLs work allow you to access pages that don't come up in the search.

e.g. I cannot search for WYVILL baronets successfully, however, I know from my copy of DB 2008 that YARROW comes after it, so I searched for the Yarrow baronets, which goes to the correct page.  Whilst the URLs are customarily long, e.g.

https://www.debretts1769.com/f/3033?page=1&slug=3032&query=yarrow&indices%5BFamilies%5D%5Bconfigure%5D%5BhitsPerPage%5D=100&indices%5BFamilies%5D%5Bpage%5D=1

in actual fact nothing after the first ? matters and:

https://www.debretts1769.com/f/3033

does just fine.

I think their system is that Yarrow is the 3033rd family listed. So I changed this to https://www.debretts1769.com/f/3032 and indeed it did take me to the dormant WYVILL baronets, giving me an updated set of collaterals.  Hopefully they can fix their search.

Quite pleased that many baronetical families now have a complete list of Predecessors which had not been present in previous print editions.

[colinp]

Thanks Henry - that's very useful especially for searching by number although Abdy, rather perversely, seems to to 1861 though Aberconway is 2

I did raise with Debrett's a few issues on the functionality of the site but didn't spot the point about the extinct peerages.  It would be useful in the "home list" of titles to have an A-Z so you could go straight to the initial letter of the peerage rather than scrolling all the way down though of course you can use the search facility.  In fact having just checked again I think you can only scroll down as far as Evans-Tipping.  Also you can't easily get back to the home list without going back through the menu.

I was looking for extinct peerage Baron Adrian so will have another go now

[bx...@yahoo.com]

Henry, thanks so much about for your very helpful hints.  I agree with both you and Colin the site isn't quite 100% search friendly.  Hopefully, they will take suggestions from we database users, and in time, will make improvements and additions.

As for the Royal Family, I did contact them and received a reply.  I was told that those pages on the RF in the print editions were not actually part of the peerage section, but were considered "editorial."   At this point, there are no plans to include those titles in the database and if interested,  to refer to either the RF website or the website of that particular person. 

I would imagine, though I'm not totally sure, Gloucester and Kent might be added when the present Dukes die, as those titles would then become ordinary (as opposed to royal) dukes.

They have made  a good start with the database, so fingers crossed, it gets even better with time.

Brooke

[colinp]

It seems the baronets start counting from 1861 - Abercromby is 1862 and Ackroyd (1958) is 1863

B Adrian (ext) is 14 if anyone is interested.  I had assumed that Baroness Adrian had died but that is not the case - in fact she is still listed as a Fellow Emerita of Newnham College, Cambridge

[Henry W]

Colin,

I am relatively certain the families were indexed in the Debrett's database according to the order they were in a recent (the last?) print edition, so all the peerage families first, then all the baronetage families.

I also noticed that ABDY is 2, which I think suggests that 1 is reserved for the Royal Family but at the moment goes nowhere.

Brooke,

Thanks for sharing the reply you received - it confirms my hypothesis.  I agree that is somewhat disingenuous of Debrett's to not include all the Peerages in the Royal Family in a Peerage database!! Hopefully they can fix this.  I used my "numbers" method to try to locate Kent, but it was not there.

Another useful addition will be for subsidiary titles to come up in search results.  I had an annoying moment of remembering the senior subsidiary title of a peer, but not the highest title and had to look it up in DB 2008 before finding the senior title in the database!

I agree its a good start and hopefully work in the coming months will improve it further.

[bx...@yahoo.com]

The change regarding the Powerscourt hp that I sent them earlier today, has now been made.  This bodes well for the database, that they are listening to what its users are submitting, and making the changes within a short period of time.

I note also, they have added the new Earl of Gowrie today.

Hopefully, this is the start of a great database for us to rely on.

Thanks Henry and Colin, for your input.

Brooke

[colinp]

It seems that the problem with searching for extinct peerages has been fixed - or at least it has for the ones I have recently search for.

[Henry W]

Perhaps for the extinct peerages, but dormant titles still an issue - Wyvill baronets (dormant 1774) can still only be found by the "numbers method" via https://www.debretts1769.com/f/3032  rather than a search.

[colinp]

Thanks.  By the way I see that the GRO indices now allow one to search for deaths/births entries in 2020

[Henry W]

I've spotted this too, though it's not quite that simple.  The only added entries are for Q4 2020. There is still no way to search for events registered in Q4 2019, Q1, Q2, Q3 2020.