Tuesday, 13 August 2013

Lies, Darn Lies, and Official Documents

To be perfectly honest with you, sometimes it's what isn't in the records that makes all the difference. No father on the birth certificate usually means a child born out of wedlock, no marriage certificate might mean that they were never married (although sometimes it just means you have to work harder to find it,) and a wife with a husband who consistently lives elsewhere may mean marital difficulties.

Occasionally, the blatant and sometimes fraudulent lies on documents are so great that it takes a court to sort them out. I recently came across an Edwardian case of identity fraud in which a man impersonated a surgeon for many, many years - it was only through myself and a contact working through newspaper reports of court cases that the real story came to light.

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