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Help with ages on 1841 Census
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Susan | Report | 2 Nov 2004 18:59 |
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Can anyone tell me if the ages on an 1841 are true or did they round them off? Can anyone tell me how they did this, I vaguely remember reading something. Thanks, Susan |
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Heather | Report | 2 Nov 2004 19:00 |
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Hi, I was told by the archivist that in the census they rounded down to the nearest 5. Hence a 23 year old would be shown as 20. A 19 year old as 15. |
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Susanne | Report | 2 Nov 2004 19:01 |
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Susan, Exact ages up to 15 years and then ages rounded down to the nearest 5, so a 43 year old would show as 40 and a 47 year old would show as 45. Sue:-) |
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Unknown | Report | 2 Nov 2004 19:02 |
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"Don’t forget that, while ages were given (supposedly) accurately from 1851 onwards, those for adults in the 1841 census were mostly rounded down to the nearest five years. Someone aged 45 in the 1841 census would therefore have been born between 1796 and 1791. " THIS INFORMATION IS ACTUALLY ON CENSUS RESEARCH SECTION IN GENEALOGY RESOURCES ON THE HOMEPAGE OF THIS WEBSITE BUT BECAUSE IT ISN'T VERY CLEAR YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T SEE IT. YOU NEED TO SCROLL DOWN TO FIND IT. I HAVE REPEATEDLY E-MAILED GR ABOUT THIS SO HOPEFULLY THEY WILL TAKE NOTE NEXT TIME THEY "IMPROVE" THE SITE. In my experience, my relatives' ages were all spot on in 1841. nell |
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Susan | Report | 2 Nov 2004 19:05 |
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Thank you everyone, what a relief, I thought I was going mad, I thought I had two different families with the same name! |
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Heather | Report | 2 Nov 2004 19:09 |
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I know they say kids were exact but I had 3 all aged 10 in one family for 1851. On the 1861 they were 22, 23 and 24. So Im not sure just how accurate guidelines are! |
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Angela | Report | 3 Nov 2004 15:14 |
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For people over the age of 15 they were rounded down to the nearest 5 years. Don't bank on them getting it right though!! I think that some of them misunderstood the instructions and rounded them up instead. The ages on all the censuses can often be inaccurate. This might be because the person recording the details from the original form misread them, people really didn't know exactly how old they were or perhaps if the records are on-line there is a typing error. |
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BrianW | Report | 3 Nov 2004 15:19 |
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It's not unusual for people to only age 6 or 7 years between censuses. And not unusual for the age difference between spouses to shrink. And I've got a 69 year old lady with a 4 year old child and husband in his 70's on 1881: both ages have had 30 years added for no apparent reason. |
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