RootsChat.Com
Scotland (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Scotland => Lanarkshire => Topic started by: boland on Friday 22 February 08 23:07 GMT (UK)
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Can anyone clarify for me how the age of people were different on the 1841 census to the rest of them ?
Thanks in advance
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Adults ages were supposedly rounded down to the nearest unit of 5 yrs
Ages of adults are rounded, not exact. Anyone aged from 15 to 19 is listed as age 15, anyone from 20 to 24 is shown as 20, etc.
is from one site although my own experience is that the rounding of the ages was generally only applied to those over 20 and that under 20's tended to be recorded fairly accurately .... but as with all census records there were variations throughout the country.
http://www.british-genealogy.com/resources/census/cen-contents.html has more information about the various census records.
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Thankyou for clarifying that... just doesn't seem to make any sense?
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You're right it doesn't make that much sense.
The only reason I can think of is that as this was the first of what we now regard as "proper" census records they may have only been looking for general figures .... ie how many adults aged 20 - 25 , 40 - 45 etc and to make the job easier at the counting end got the enumerators to do the work for them.
The 1841 is also difficult in that it lacks much of the information (relationships etc) that is found in latter records.
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In 1841, the householder was told to:
"Write in figures the age of every person, opposite to their names, in one of the columns headed "Age of Males" or "Age of Females" according to their sex. For persons aged 15 years and upwards it is sufficient to state within what period of five years their age is, writing down the lowest number of that period: thus, for persons aged 15 and under 20, write 15- for 20 and under 25, write 20- for 25 and under 30, write 25- for 30 and under 35, write 30-, and so on up to the greatest age; but the exact age may be stated if the person prefers it. For persons under 15, write the number of years; for infants under one year, the number of months."
Whether your average ag lab householder would have known what to make of this seems highly questionable!
David.-
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The Talking Scot forum has a good article on the instructions to the enumerators who would appear in many cases to have been the local school teachers or ministers
http://www.talkingscot.com/censuses/census-1841.htm
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Thankyou for information this gives a clearer year of birth and age at time of census