Mandy Rice-Davies

[minesapint]

Can someone help me clarify where the late Marilyn (Mandy) Rice-Davies was born please. The majority of national newspaper obituaries name her birthplace as Pontyates (aka Pontiets) near Llanelli, Carmarthenshire. The major Welsh newspapers are of the same opinion. I even saw Pontyates acknowledged on the news on TV.

However, the Wikipedia entry has recently been amended to show her birthplace as Mere in Wiltshire. The notes made by the person who amended the entry to Mere states that this is based upon a "birth index". As I understand it, her parents moved to Mere when she was a child.

I can find no such "birth index" of her name anywhere so how can I find her true birthplace?

Thank you

[Buenchico]

FreeBMD finds nobody with the surname 'Rice-Davies' born in the quarter ending December 1944.

However there's a Marilyn R Davies listed as born in Merthyr Tydfil during that quarter. Her mother's maiden surname was Lewis:
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?r=188516526:4318&d=bmd_1416902484
(Looking at a map though, I can see no way that Pontyates could come within the Merthyr Tydfil registration district).

It's possible that the birth was double-registered, as a Marilyn R Davies (also with a mother with the maiden name of Lewis) is listed as being born, in the same quarter, in Mere:
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?r=188516525:4685&d=bmd_1416902484

[Baldric]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Rice-Davies

[Baldric]

Sorry, meant to add it says Mere in Wiltshire here ^^^^^^

[Buenchico]

^^^It's that Wikipedia information which Minesapint is question though, Baldric!!!

[Buenchico]

^^^Oops! 'questioning', not 'question'!

[tonyav]

The Guardian say's she was born in Llanelli.
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/magazine/mandy-rice-davies-obituary/ar-BBh0bQ6

[Baldric]

Oops, I really should read more than the first paragraph.

[minesapint]

Thank you Chris. I'm very grateful for your help and time. I entered the surname Rice-Davies in FreeBMD and didn't consider anything other than the double-barrelled name in the search parameters.

Baldric, it does appear as if someone is very ill-informed about her birthplace as the editing chronology of the Wikipedia entry has been modified back to Mere by a user in recent days. You can check this out for yourself. This modification has been done despite what amounts to overwhelming indications from the national newspapers that she was born in Pontyates. I find it very difficult to believe that these newspapers can make an error like this as their reputations are at stake. Why do all the newspapers concur she was born in Pontyates if she was not? Surely, they cannot all be wrong?

Thank you all.

[Buenchico]

Thanks for your post, Minesapint.

My suggestion of a 'double-registration' of a birth is worth keeping in mind. It's not unknown for parents of a child with Welsh forebears, born in England, to register the birth both locally and then somewhere in Wales as well (to 'preserve their Welshness').

It would be interesting to view the full details of those registrations in Merthyr Tydfil and Mere to see if they match up (regarding the parents' names and date of birth). It might be, for example, that MRD was actually born in Pontyates but her parents never got round to registering her birth until (for example) she was entering school after they'd moved to Mere. They could then have decided to register the birth quickly in Mere (so that the primary school would accept her date of birth as correct) but also chosen to register the birth in Wales as well. Given that they'd no longer got any links to Pontyates, they then chose Merthyr Tydfil (where there where still family connections) to register the birth.

[Canary42]

"...all the newspapers concur she was born in Pontyates..."

They would, wouldn't they ? :)

[Old_Geezer]

Very likely, if they all copy each other without checking.

I say, ask her parents.

[jno]

newspapers these days, what with being understaffed by people underqualified, do have an increasing tendency to cut and paste from Wikipedia, or from each other, as OG says.

Asking parents isn't necessarily the path to truth, though. Try tracing the children of, say, a journeyman worker, through past censuses and watch how their birthplaces change as the parents forget exactly where they were and when.