Richardson , Ralph Nelson (R N)

16 Sep 2026, ServiceNo contamination sweep: the stored ServiceNo 'E/15631' was CLEARED. It was not a reading of this man's record. PersonNumbers 32681 to 32682 -- 2 consecutive records -- all carried the identical number, which belongs to the record at the head of that run (32681, Richardson, Colin (C)). A value repeated down an unbroken block of PersonNumbers is a forward-fill import artefact, not men who shared a service number; the pattern holds across 850 such runs on this roll and is independently confirmed by Mike Sandham's research log, which attaches such numbers to the head of the run 167 times against 6 contradictions (all examined). No replacement is guessed: this man's real service number is simply not known, and a blank field says so honestly where another man's number did not.
24 Sep 2026, 1 SSB unit history pass: the stored Unit "1 Special Service Battalion" was CLEARED from this record. It cannot be right. This man died on 6 December 1907 and the Special Service Battalion was not formed until 1 May 1933, twenty-five years later -- so no reading of his own record can have produced that unit. His Regiment, Transvaal Town Police, agrees with everything else here: shot while on duty at Florida, buried at Johannesburg (Braamfontein), aged 21, Force COLONIAL. The stray value looks like the same forward-fill that put another man's service number on him (see the 16 Sep 2026 note above): PersonNumber 32680, two rows up, is Richardson-Smith, who died in 1993 and genuinely served in 1 SSB. No replacement unit is guessed -- the regiment is already recorded and the Unit field is simply not known.
25 Sep 2026, Unit2 service-branch sweep: the stored Secondary Unit "Army" was CLEARED as a duplicate. It was not a sub-unit, it was a service-branch word repeating what the Branch column already says. Secondary Unit is for sub-units -- a company, a squadron, a commando -- and this record's branch of service is unchanged at "Army".