Strange 1911 Census entry – was he there or deceased? (Not a look-up request)

[Rena]

How sad that he should have died so young.

I think the new layout of the 1911 census might have confused the household.  This census asks about children born to the couple and maybe it was thought that the father's name should be entered.

[JenB]

  He told me that he had eliminated the 1910 death. 

I think the first thing you need to do is to discover on what basis he eliminated the 1910 death.

[jim1]

Many of the 1911 census entries have mistakes as they were the first to be filled in exclusively by the householder.
It looks to me that Thomas has correctly put his mother as head but where the question asks "how many years married" he's become confused & included his deceased father in order to give an answer.
He's probably queried this with the census collector who's corrected it for him.

jim

[chris_49]

I've found two families who'd misunderstood the "children alive and deceased" question and included their dead children as if they were living. I could work it out from the number of children born to the marriage equalling the total number of children present, and from death record detail matching. I expect these children were added to the population totals!

[Sinann]

John is down as 48, is this the age he died at?, do you have a birth date for him?
What was his age in 1901?

[MJW]

Thanks to everyone for interesting and constructive comments.

Many of the 1911 census entries have mistakes as they were the first to be filled in exclusively by the householder.
It looks to me that Thomas has correctly put his mother as head but where the question asks "how many years married" he's become confused & included his deceased father in order to give an answer.
He's probably queried this with the census collector who's corrected it for him.

jim

Jim - that sounds very plausible.

Sinann - We don't know when and where he died, that's what triggered this query. It was whilst looking for his death that we found the confusing 1911 census entry. He was born in 1864 - his age is shown as 37 in 1901.

As I mentioned earlier, I will check with my friend (whose great grandfather this is) as to why/how he eliminated the 1910 Blackburn death as not being the correct John Wynne.

Thanks ... Malcolm

[Sloe Gin]

Many of the 1911 census entries have mistakes as they were the first to be filled in exclusively by the householder.

That's not correct.  It is a common misconception.

All the censuses from 1841 involved a form being left with the householder to be completed by them, and collected a few days later by the enumerator.  The 1911 census was no different in this respect from the preceding ones. 

What was different was that all the original forms for the earlier censuses were destroyed, and all that was retained were the enumerators' schedule books, into which the details had been copied.  So those are secondary sources and contain plenty of omissions and errors.

The 1911 census is just the first for which the original forms were kept.

[MJW]

As I mentioned earlier, I will check with my friend (whose great grandfather this is) as to why/how he eliminated the 1910 Blackburn death as not being the correct John Wynne.

Thanks ... Malcolm

Just an update on this.  I checked with my friend and he already had the 1910 Blackburn death certificate for John Wynne.  There were several issues/anomalies with this that made him very doubtful that this was his G GF, including :-
- address where he died (in Darwen) was unknown to him
- his occupation was shown as gardener (on other records he was always a cotton weaver)
- his age was a couple of years out
- didn't recognise informant

Since then, I've now found this Darwen address on the 1911 census and there is a Wynne family living there - Head is Annie Wynne, widow age 47, with 3 children, all born in Scotland. Annie would be the widow of this John Wynne who died in 1910.

Based on this, I think we can eliminate this John Wynne as not being the correct person. This is a different family.

So, this takes me back to the question in my original post of when & where John Wynne died, and whether he really had died before that confusing 1911 census entry.

Any thoughts most welcome.

Thanks .... Malcolm
     

[Colin Cruddace]

I would be tempted to investigate the Darwen family in earlier census records to confirm that there are 2 John Wynne's, to rule out the possibility of bigamy. 

Colin