Role Reversal....1939

[Treetotal]

This entry in the 1939 register made me smile.

Ada Tiplady...Bricklayer Plasterer...Incapacitated
John Maw...Unpaid Domestic Duties

 

Not role reversal but an error which was correct on the original but the names are messed up.

A househusband and a woman in a male dominated profession would have had real novelty value in my tree 

Carol
 

[rosie99]

Good one.   

It is wrongly transcribed as it was done in columns not rows then wrongly matched.

[jbml]

Good one.   

It is wrongly transcribed as it was done in columns not rows then wrongly matched.

Ahhhhhh .... that explains the trouble I was having with one of my extended family households in the 1939 Register ... all of the ages and occupations were out by one row in the transcript ... but were obviously correct in the original document!

[rosie99]

I think it was done that way so that no one that was transcribing it could get full information on anyone 

[andrewalston]

I've come across a few badly aligned sheets where the redaction heads off diagonally, on one occasion to the person three line above the one whose name is not to be seen. The occupations were, like this, way off.

Probably a transcriber coming back from a break and not starting where they left off!

I've also seen men with genuine "Unpaid Domestic Duties" while the wife had a paid job, but of the type expected for a married woman at the time.

In many households, the wife appears first. This is likely to be caused by the need to get everyone registered at speed - deal with whoever opens the door and then get the others sorted.

[rosie99]

FindMyPast's blog explains how it was transcribed
https://blog.findmypast.co.uk/watch-1436591498.html

One question that has come up frequently is how the transcription process worked. Owing to privacy reasons, rather than dealing with horizontal rows of text each transcriber worked in vertical columns so that they could never see the entire record of an individual whose record would be closed when the Register was published online.

The names on the Register were transcribed in transcription houses in Britain, and we were contractually obliged to meet an accuracy rate in readable records of 98% or greater. As the Register consists of the personal handwriting of 65,000 enumerators, errors will of course pop up, and there is a process to report any you may find.