Their Ages are wrong!
Ages in Censuses.
It is well know that ages as recorded in censuses often appear wrong. Why is this? The reasons are many and varied but here are some possibilities.
One further thing is the 1841 census treated the census in a different way than the others. The instructions given to those who filled in the form was that ages should be rounded down to the nearest 5 except for those 15 or younger who had the age they were on the last birthday. So a person actually aged 20 would be recorded as 20 whereas a person aged 19 would be recorded as being 15 years old.
- Where did the information come from? In theory the head of house filled in the Schedule form, but not always. He may be illiterate, or unavailable or drunk or many other reasons. So who might fill in the Schedule?
- Head of Household
- His wife
- One of the children
- Someone else who was staying at the house
- A neighbour
- The Enumerator (He did not do it as often as you might think, he had enough to do, and if he did the head of household would probably be at work and he would have to ask the wife or one of the younger children)
- The Enumerator then copies the information onto the Enumerators form. This is the form we see when we ask to see the image. Bad hand writing might contribute to the errors. Any transcription always leads to additional errors.
- Ancestry, Find my Past etc. then produce indexes which introduces more errors. You can eliminate any error at this stage by looking at the image.
- All of this assumes that the informant knows the information. I have had to calculate my own age for many years. It’s not something that registers as important. If I don’t know my own then, don’t ask me about my wife or children. Fortunately I have my family tree to help me fill in the census form. You might think me odd, but I don’t think many Victorians would be able to do it either. The younger the child the more likely they could estimate their age accurately.
- Did they deliberately lie? Many people did not trust the government’s reason for holding the census. Many suspected it as for taxation reasons. Others thought that their employers or others might get hold of the information. So it was easy to alter ages to suit the story they wished to tell.
- The lie might have predated the census. For instance a husband and/or wife might have lied about their ages when they married or the man might have lied about his age when joined the military - once a lie like this is told it has to be kept up.
- As a man gets older he might fear that he might lose his employment because of his age. So he lies so that he can support his family. There was no unemployment pay in those days.
- The lie might have predated the census. For instance a husband and/or wife might have lied about their ages when they married or the man might have lied about his age when joined the military - once a lie like this is told it has to be kept up.
One further thing is the 1841 census treated the census in a different way than the others. The instructions given to those who filled in the form was that ages should be rounded down to the nearest 5 except for those 15 or younger who had the age they were on the last birthday. So a person actually aged 20 would be recorded as 20 whereas a person aged 19 would be recorded as being 15 years old.
