Little
White Lies: Lies on Censuses and Certificates
We like to think of our ancestors as fine upstanding
members of the community and it can sometimes come as a shock to discover that
they told an untruth when registering important events such as births,
marriages and deaths or when passing on personal details to census enumerators.
Giving false information on a census was actually an offence punishable by a
fine (in 1911 this could have been up to £5), but nevertheless many people took
the risk and lied anyway. Unfortunately for us, our ancestors may have misrepresented
all manner of details about themselves including their names, ages, occupations,
places of birth, relationship to the heads of households, infirmities and, in
the 1911 census, even how many years they had been married and how many
children they had had. But don’t
despair, working out why your
ancestor might have lied about one fact or another can be just as satisfying as
– and perhaps even more thrilling than - uncovering the truth straight off. It
can certainly tell you a great deal about the times in which he or she lived.
Those ancestors who deliberately lied on official
documents may have done so for a number of reasons:
1.
To
hide certain experiences.
This
marriage certificate of my own great-grandfather William Symes in 1884 looks
innocent enough but it, in fact includes two lies. He describes himself as a
‘bachelor’ when in fact he was a widower (as evidenced by the 1881 census and
an earlier marriage certificate of 1878). He also describes his father as
‘William Symes’ an ‘agricultural labourer’. In fact, my William was
illegitimate and probably didn’t know his real father’s name. In cases such as
this, it was common for men to give as their father’s name either their own
name or the name of another ‘fatherly’ male relative. In this case, William’s
grandfather had also been William Symes (and he was indeed an agricultural
labourer); this is the man who probably brought him up and this is the man he
was thinking of when he gave his details to the registrar.
William
Symes got away with the lies about his personal status because between his two
marriages he had moved from his birthplace in the South West of England to
Manchester where nobody knew about his earlier life. In an age before it was
possible for the authorities to check on such details, he was not alone in his mendacity.
Other people lied about their age to obscure other secrets - periods in prison
or in mental institutions, for example. Some women described themselves as ‘widows’
on census forms to avoid having to admit that their husbands were still alive
but had been imprisoned or transported. Some would-be spouses described
themselves as ‘spinsters’, ‘bachelors’, ‘widows’ or ‘widowers’ on their
marriage certificates in order to be able to marry bigamously.
2.
Vanity
Women
of all classes fabricated their age on the census. The government report in
1881 stated that many women ‘desirous of being thought younger than they really
are return themselves as under 25 or under 30 when their true age is
considerably beyond these limits.’ There was also a particular tendency for
women to state that their age was between 20 and 25 (when they were actually either
younger or older than that age). Occupation was another area in which arrogance
could lead to deception. Your ancestors might have given an inflated
description of their source of income – calling themselves ‘farmers’, for
instance, when they were actually no more than ‘farmhands’.
3.
To appear
respectable
Some
people did not want to admit to large discrepancies in age between themselves
and their partners (particularly if the woman was older than the man). An unmarried
women might describe herself as a ‘housekeeper’ or ‘domestic servant’ to
obscure the sexual nature of her relationship with the head of a household. Prostitutes would rarely return the true
nature of their occupation in the census but would class themselves as ‘needlewomen’
or ‘domestic servants’. On the 1911 census, couples were asked for the first
time how long they had been married. Many gave a falsely extended number of
years – just enough to render all their children legitimate!
4.
To
obtain some economic advantage
Many
young Victorian girls pretended on censuses that they had already reached the
age of 15 in order to have a better chance of obtaining work as domestic
servants and to command better wages when they did so. Couples living together
but not actually married often claimed to be spouses in order (erroneously as
it turned out) to protect their own position in the event of the death of the
other partner. Some people falsely added years to their age on the 1911 census
in order to qualify for the old-age pension (to which some people over 70 were
entitled from January 1st 1909).
5.
To
avoid a penalty
The
birth of a child had to be registered within 6 weeks (42 days) on penalty of a
fine. In order to avoid this, parents who had left registering their children
late would often falsify the date of birth on a certificate by a matter of a
few weeks. For this reason, it’s always worth looking at the date of
registration on a birth certificate. If it is exactly six weeks from the date
of birth, you should perhaps be a little suspicious.
6.
To
enlist
When
the First World War started in August 1914 a vigorous propaganda campaign
persuaded tens of thousands of young men excitedly to sign up and do their bit
for King and Country. To fight abroad you had to be at least nineteen, but you
could enlist at eighteen. Many boys of 15, 16 and 17, however, lied about their
ages and, as it was not compulsory to provide a birth certificate to confirm
your age (until conscription started in January 1916), many got away with it.
Falsehoods
or Mistakes?
If you discover that something is not quite right about
information submitted by your ancestor on a census or certificate of
registration, you should not always jump to the conclusion that he or she was deliberately
lying. There are a number of other reasons why incorrect information might have
been passed on to officialdom. Here are some to consider:
Genuine
Error
Our ancestors in the nineteenth century were subject to
far fewer identity checks than we are today. During the course of their whole
lives they were hardly ever required to give their age or date of birth and would
have kept little paperwork relating to themselves. Thus, when they were asked
to give personal information in a formal setting (such as when they registered
their own marriage or gave their age to a census enumerator), it is possible
that they quite simply just made a mistake.
For births and deaths of course, the events were not registered by the main
actor in the event but by other family members (and sometimes by friends or
neighbours). This registering of information at one remove, in itself, might
have led to mistakes.
Illiteracy
Until Forster’s Education Act of 1870 made schooling for
all five to twelve year olds compulsory (and indeed in many cases even after
that) – many people grew up either totally unable to read and write or with
very little ability to do so. If they were filling in information about
themselves, they might well have entered information wrongly.
Ignorance
Our ancestors may not have had a clear idea about some of
their own personal details, particularly their ages. In rural communities
children were employed when they were tall enough or strong enough to do a job,
not when they reached a particular age. Whilst they might have been clear about
their day and month of birth, the year of their birth might have been less of a
matter of certainty. A government report on the 1881 census stated that many
people ‘keep their date of birth in mind for the earlier part of their life, up
to 20 years or so, but after this, they lose reckoning, and can only make an approximative
statement.’
Vagueness/Confusion
People
giving their ages also often confused the year of age in which they were living
with the number of years actually completed. Thus your great-grandmother might
have given her age as 21 when in fact she was simply in the 21st
year of her life and was therefore, in fact, still only 20.
Poor
questioning on the part of officialdom
Some registrars and census enumerators may not have been
clear about exactly what information they required. A good example of this is
where a woman marrying for the second time was asked for her ‘previous’ name.
What the registrar actually wanted was the maiden name, but many women
mistakenly gave their first married name at this point. Here an imprecise
registrar might unwittingly have created a major headache for family historians
trying to trace a woman’s birth family.
Case
Study – Ellen Lawless Robinson
The case of Ellen Lawless Robinson, is a genealogist’s puzzle
and delight. When she reached her early thirties, still young, slim and
attractive, this audacious lady shaved fourteen years from her age, so that by 1881
(when she was in fact 42 years old) she was able to claim to be just 28!
The reasons for which Ellen fabricated her age are deep
rooted. As a young woman (from 1858 to 1870 when she was aged 17- 31), it is
likely that she had been the lover of the world famous author Charles Dickens. Captivated
by her good looks, engaging personality, literary knowledge and theatrical
family, Dickens set Ellen up in her own home and struck up an affair with her that
may have involved the birth of one or more children who died in infancy. In
order to keep the memory of Dickens sacrosanct and to make her own virtue appear
intact, Ellen found it expedient, after Dickens’s death, to make several years
of her life disappear.
Ellen’s deception probably succeeded because she and her
husband lived in Margate, a long way from the social contacts of her earlier
life. She was also a consummate actress accustomed to adopting new roles. Subsequent
censuses show that in later life she continued to have a flexible relationship
with the truth and her lies were inconsistent. In 1891, she claimed to be 48 years old (she
was in fact 52). In 1901 (when she was actually 62), she said that she was 50.
In 1911, she claimed to be 70 and stated that she had given birth to just two
children (was this a lie to cover up the child or children she had had with
Dickens?). Ellen finally died from cancer on April 25th 1914. She
would have been 75 years old – not a bad age - but her children must have
lamented that her death came far too early – after all, they thought that she
was just 61!
Claire Tomalin, Charles
Dickens – A Life, Viking, 2011
Claire Tomalin – The
Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, Penguin,
1991
Peter Christian and David Annal, Census: The Expert Guide, The National Archives, 2008
Edward Higgs, Making
Sense of the Census Revisited: A Handbook for Historical Researchers,
Institute of Historical Research, 2005
Useful
Websites
