COMPLETED Tips & Tricks - Census Ages

[lorisarvendu]

Probably obvious to some people, but it wasn't to me, so I'm going to post it here as I've just noticed it myself!

UK Censuses are all taken in the 2nd Quarter of each year. But anyone who was born in the 3rd or 4th Quarter of a year will always appear to be a year younger. I have been tracking a pair of twins born in 1945 who had inexplicably vanished from the 1861 Census. The 1851 Census recorded them as both being 6, but I couldn't find their birth records...until I located them in Oct 1844 and realised that this was why they were only 6 in 1851...because the Census was 4-5 months before their next birthdays!

Like I said, obvious to some, but maybe not to others.

-Dave

[AndrewA]

COrrect.

It also doesn't help people when programmes such as Who Do You Think You Are and even some ancestry videos show census searches using the exact year with age range as plus or minus zero.

One factor to take into account is who is the person residing with? Some poeple might not know exact age, even parents, especially those with 10 children or more can sometimes get the ages wrong.

Then there is of course transcription errors.

[snoopysue]

And wasn't the 1841 census supposed to round the ages down (or was it up?) to the nearest five years. I can never remember which way it was supposed to be, but then neither could the enumerators, so some are rounded up, others down, and some had recorded the exact age - certainly doesn't help matters. I always allow a larger margin of error with the 1841 census than with the others!

I've also found ages out by ten years from one census to the next, whether this is the person telling the wrong age, or the enumerators recording the wrong age we will never know. And there is the case of a wife older than her husband who knocks a few years of her real age!

[Northern Lass]

moving to misc

[gardener]

I always keep my Dad in mind when I search. He had our birth dates written on the outside of the tax folder because he could never recall what year we were born - and there were only two of us!

[AndrewA]

And wasn't the 1841 census supposed to round the ages down (or was it up?) to the nearest five years. I can never remember which way it was supposed to be, but then neither could the enumerators, so some are rounded up, others down, and some had recorded the exact age - certainly doesn't help matters. I always allow a larger margin of error with the 1841 census than with the others!

I've also found ages out by ten years from one census to the next, whether this is the person telling the wrong age, or the enumerators recording the wrong age we will never know. And there is the case of a wife older than her husband who knocks a few years of her real age!

CORRECT!

The 1841 Census should have had ages rounded DOWN to nearest 5, so a 19 year old is recorded as 15. THe 1841 district I am currently working on has ages written correctly.

People lie about thier age all the time. I forget which census, i think it was the 1881 census, but anyway it was found that the number of people in the age group for 15-16 year olds and under 30s had increased from the corresponsding ages taken in the previous census. Of course the numbers should in theory have decreased slighty due to mortality rates, not increased. When it was investigated, it was found that mainly girls aged 12-13 had been put down as 15 years old as it was the age at which they could start work, older women also wanted to appear younger, so they lied they were much younger than they were.

I have no idea why people thought lying on census would influence thier lives, but obviously they did, just as in more recent years hundreds of thousands of people refused to complete the 1991 census as they thought they were going to be used to collate information for the proposed Poll Tax. The 1991 Census is the most incomplete census as a result.

Going back to Victorian times, the issue of lying about age on census was such a concern it was actually raised in Parliament.

[lorisarvendu]

Isn't there a Census coming up where lots of women refused to put themselves down, because of Suffrage?

I didn't know about the 1841 "rounding" issue. Although I rarely go back that far, I'll keep an eye out for it.

-Dave

[AndrewA]

The 1911 Census attracted plenty of protests. It will be interesting to see the 1921 census as well, as only upperclass women were given the vote at that point with women being put on equal voting rights as men in 1928.

Many Women refused to fill in thier details, some forms just have the men listed, others were not filled in at all with very clear political messages scrawled accross them. Here is a more creative example.

[SRD]

I had one where the head of house, her daughter and friend refused but they filled in the servants' details.