Genealogy Forum UK

What sort of deviants can one expect between censuses?

I know spelling can alter slightly, more so in the earlier ones..

But how about age!

As I found who I was looking for in the 1911 census, everything here tallied up..

So moved onto the 1901 census...

The parents name matches, so does their ages and other details such as place of birth..

However the son Robert that I was expecting to find there, was identical apart from age... In the 1911 census he's apparently 10 years old, on the 1901 census he's listed as being 3 1/2...

Just had a thought, could this 31/2 actually be his months in age rather than years!

might be 3 and half weeks cant say with out seeing census

all census should tally up for age but most are a few years out

1841 age rounded down to nearest 5 ie 29 becomes 25 years

Ages can vary quite a lot when the parents were not too good at maths.
And then the census can be incorrectly filled in. My grandfather is clearly marked as aged 11 in the 1901 census but he was actually 11 months.
It could well be 3/12 in your case. If you want to post the details someone will have a look I'm sure.

It's not unusual for dates to vary, sometimes it's down to poor transcriptions on behalf of the census taker who was filling in the forms from working from poorly written notes taken in the field. If you are working from the transcribed records on some web sites there can be errors in those transcriptions, I've seen 3s transcribed as 8s, 1s or 2s as 7s, and vice versa.
I've had a number whose age has changed once their partner has died and some where only the age on the gravestone was accurate. It may have been deliberate or accidental.

Similar things can occur regarding birth places. Parents usually know where their kids were born but the kids themselves may think the first place they remember was their birthplace when actually their parents moved whilst they were infants. And again mistranscriptions can occur, either by local census takers not knowing about other counties or countries or by the websites that publish the transcriptions; Ancestry is great at putting West Grimstead (in Wiltshire) instead of West Grinstead (in Sussex).

I've taken another look at the actual census, rather than just relying on the transcript and it's my second thought a Months' rather than years!

The information tallied up so much, and if a bit of family gossip is true, then ties in and makes a lot of sense..

On the 1871 census, again I'm faced with the location from 'where from' but positive it's them, slight difference in in place of birth but saying that, both villages are next to each other, so probably a case of where village boundary lines are considered to be!

jo. wrote:I've taken another look at the actual census, rather than just relying on the transcript and it's my second thought a Months' rather than years!

The information tallied up so much, and if a bit of family gossip is true, then ties in and makes a lot of sense..

On the 1871 census, again I'm faced with the location from 'where from' but positive it's them, slight difference in in place of birth but saying that, both villages are next to each other, so probably a case of where village boundary lines are considered to be!

As far as place goes, it can vary from census to census, not just switching between neighbouring villages, but also between counties. Sometimes that's due to moving boundary lines - some people put down the county that the town was in at the time of the census, others the county the town was in when they were born!

jo. wrote:What sort of deviants can one expect between censuses?

I know spelling can alter slightly, more so in the earlier ones..

But how about age!

As I found who I was looking for in the 1911 census, everything here tallied up..

So moved onto the 1901 census...

The parents name matches, so does their ages and other details such as place of birth..

However the son Robert that I was expecting to find there, was identical apart from age... In the 1911 census he's apparently 10 years old, on the 1901 census he's listed as being 3 1/2...

Just had a thought, could this 31/2 actually be his months in age rather than years!

I've seen this before, it meant a third of a year (four months)