This transcript indexes the births, marriages and deaths to be found in Bishop Richard Challoner's personal Notebook 1734 - 1780. The other sections in the notebook, include lists of clergy, confirmations etc. can be found in the Society's library.

Thanks are due to Sylvia Dibbs and the Catholic Family History Society (http://www.catholic-history.org.uk/cfhs/) for permission to reproduce this transcript on SoG Data Online.

Richard Challoner, born in 1691 to a Presbyterian family and died in 1781, was baptised as a Roman Catholic at the age of 13 years and became Vicar Apostolic of the London District in 1758. The district included ten counties, the Channel Islands and the British possessions in America, chiefly Maryland and Pennsylvania and some West Indian islands.
This index is prepared from a photocopy of the original held at Westminster Diocesan Archives, London, England, catalogue reference number: Z71. While it is not a direct transcription, all readable entries have been copied. The intention was to make the contents more easily accessible to historians of all kinds.
The little book is approximately A5 and consists of 146 pages, of which pages 5, 9, 56-59, 60, 110-131, 133, 135 and 147 are blank. It is very closely written and rather hard to read. It was not written in date order. There are some passages in abbreviated Latin. The notes seem to have been for personal use and so did not need to be well organised.

The contents were transcribed initially by Catholic Family History Society members: Peter Turnbull, Barbara Murray, who put tremendous effort into reading and deciphering the handwriting. Sylvia J. Dibbs completed and reformatted the material for publication. This version gives the lists in alphabetic order usually by surname, with a page number to make it possible to locate the original entry. Some entries were too hard to read and these are indicated with a ?.

The notebook contains lists of names of people who were baptised, who died and were married. There are notes of important happenings in the London District and beyond. There are references to clergy, to the education of boys and girls, to Douai College, Sedgley Park College and Lisbon College, to costs, to travel. There is mention of his books both to costs of printing them and lending them to people.

The entries for deaths are clearly indicated in the original as 'obiit', died. The entries of marriages are also clear, but those assumed to be baptisms are clear only in the earlier entries, which give parents and godparents. The rest may not be, though sometimes an assumed baptism is followed a few days later by an 'obiit' entry for someone of the same name, suggesting either an infant death or a deathbed conversion.