Deliberate census error

[usuallyconfused]

The 1911 census shows a shipyard labourer in Walker, Newcastle on Tyne, with 7 children, although it is an eighth child born in 1915 that is my wife's grandmother. She died last year aged 94 but she told people that she had many brothers and sisters that died young.

It is very easy to find their parents in the 1901 census with two children, and also very easy to find the 8 children in BMD records, born from 1898 to 1915. Curiously, though, 5 of the 7 children that appear in the 1911 census died before it was carried out, including the one born in 1898 who died the same year, which explains why the 1901 census shows 2 children not 3. The use of their mother's maiden name as their middle name makes them all very distinctive, so I am very confident that the BMD records are correct.

Upon further inspection, the 1911 census has a set of columns for "Total children born alive", "Children still living" and "Children who have died". In the second column, the 2 has been overwritten with a 7 and the 5 in the third column has been crossed out. This census record has been signed by the father.

Very obviously, the father has deliberately lied and has stated that he has 7 children alive, when in fact he only had 2, and the question is why?

I can only assume that in 1911 there was some kind of benefit or relief available that he was claiming and he thought that he would be caught out unless he lied on the census, something which he only thought of once he had started to fill it in, but before he listed the children.

Does anyone know if this was a common practice and if so, what type of handout might a poor labourer expect?

[Maths girl]

Your thought is certainly a possibility - my initial thought was that they belonged to a religious sect that considered children born to be still alive even though they have died in the sense of having expired - don't know whether there is such a sect.

I know Mormons can have an "everlasting marriage" that in some sense continues after death as we know it.

I presume that you have the marriage certificate and that it predates all the children because I think the columns you refer to are "born in this marriage"

[usuallyconfused]

An interesting idea, one which hadn't occurred to me. The marriage certificate etc. all fits and as far as I know, they were Protestant and this caused a bit of a problem when the daughter married a Catholic - my wife's grandfather. If it had been a strange attitude to death, then I would have assumed to see the first dead child in the 1901 census, but he isn't. So being a benefit cheat still seems the most likely but you never know.