Beeby's dates

[oldnick]

Victorian script is often seen to have a 7 looking like a 9 (or is it vice versa?) and Beeby's in particular gets misinterpreted. For instance, equal numbers of his sheets from Oxshott have been edited as 7/8/1871 and as 7/8/1891. (I favour the former reading.) The suspicion then is that two whole decades of his specimens have in 50% of cases been mis-dated by two decades. Any thoughts?

[oldnick]

This style of number is even more clearly a 7 on specimens from Merstham eg http://herbariaunited.org/specimen/343179/ and in fact many of Beeby's Merstham specimens have been edited as from the 1870s, and none from the 1890s. The 7 is in more familiar style on
http://herbariaunited.org/specimen/344564/?image which is dated 20/7/1872, the date of a number of the Merstham specimens. This seems to justify re-editing Beeby specimens from the 1890s

[Roger Horton]

The date on sheet 394055 7 . 8 . 1891 (below) shows Beeby writing the '7' with a clear initial serif, and the '9' with a clear loop. In the 1870s he seems to have connected the '8' to the serif of the '7' thus causing confusion. Currently there are 146 specimens in h@h collected by Beeby 1890-1899 which might be in error.

[Roger Horton]

See the Date Formats section of Beeby's biography page.

[oldnick]

Roger Horton advises he is now re-editing the relevant 1890s specimens