Engineer: true or false?

[suey]

There is someone in my husbands tree described as an "engineer" on his marriage cert., family say he stoked the boilers at the local hospital 

Suey

[youngtug]

I have a person described as an accountant at his daughters marriage in the parish records, he was a bookies runner.

Engineer  covers a wide range, and at times people would say engineer rather than something that sounded more mundane, that's apart from the outright lie's.Some countries have more regulation over the term than others and of course some countries have different meanings for the same words, albeit they are English speaking.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_engineering

[barryd]

The bookies runner calling himself an Accountant is stretching things a bit but a Turf Accountant is a  bookmaker licensed to take bets on horse races.

[Billyblue]

And then you've got ships' engineers, who did not necessarily have a university degree, were maybe a boilermaker in shore life.



Dawn M

[youngtug]

Probably not boiler makers, more likely fitter/machinist

[sallyyorks]

The bookies runner calling himself an Accountant is stretching things a bit but a Turf Accountant is a  bookmaker licensed to take bets on horse races.

Like poster youngtug , i have a  relative who was definately  a bookies runner (a grt grandads brother in Birmingham) and  he described himself as an "accountant" too
. Have also seen more than one criminal record were the convict has the occupation "clerk" . Two distant  "cousins" on completey different branches are described as "clerks" in criminal records  . One is covered in tattoos and the other one has  scars that are probably from knife fights (thumb , ear ect)  . There are also mugshots of them looking nothing  like "clerks" at all !!!    (this was in Australian mugshots after they had emmigrated from England late 1800s)

[youngtug]

The bookies runner calling himself an Accountant is stretching things a bit but a Turf Accountant is a  bookmaker licensed to take bets on horse races.

Not a turf accountant although he kept several in employment over the years

[DaveFH13]

Engineer is still a very misused term.
The records of the Institute of Civil Engineers and Institute of Mechanical Engineers up to 1930 are on Ancestry.

Regards

David (C.Eng, MIMechE)

[Skoosh]

I don't think that a ships engineer would be a man of letters, shouting Jock down the engine room hatch usually got a response, and was usually qualification enough 
A boilerman/stoker might sometimes have assisted the engineers, who would have served their time as fitters or millwrights.

Skoosh.