Genealogy Chat

Thanks to the vagaries of Ancestry's transcriptions, if you want to see examples of blind people, then enter blind in their parish of birth.

Incidentally, it's only the last column on the English census. In Wales, the disability recorded in the last column would be speaking Welsh only ;-)

Yes it can be abit misleading at first. I had one written in that column "broken his back". When I mentioned it to an aunt, she said "oh I remember him now, he was a jockey and was thrown off his horse in a race". Now I would have never known that if the numerator hadn´t put it in that column".

Agree with Kath and Margaret, I saw an entire District with that column ticked, now unless the 500 people there were all deaf, dumb, blind or imbeciles, the column was used for some other purpose.

Margaret

Sometimes if the last column is ticked it is because that particular person was born in a different county to the one they are living in at that particular census.

You can usually check if this is the case by seeing if the people ticked in the last column were all born somewhere other than the county they are in.

Kath. x

I don't believe they just tick that column. The ones I've seen are written in, often something like "imbecile from birth" or "blind from childhood".
Sometimes the ticks don't mean anything, just the enumerator adding up things.

Does anyone know what the last column in the 1901 census means? It's headed;
(1) Deaf and Dumb
(2) Blind
(3) Lunatic
(4) Imbecile, feeble-minded

Some people are ticked and others aren't. Does it mean they are one of the four? If so what was the purpose of it and why not write down the number?? Please help!!