Ages Slashed/Crossed Out?

[Rebecca Totten]

Why are ages slashed or crossed out on Census's? do they mean they were taken down wrong?

[groom]

This could explain it:

"Finally, there are the markings that add nothing to the data. Typical of these are the annoyingly thick strokes through ages; presumably made as the clerks grouped the population by age. We just have to work through these"

http://medeschole.blogspot.co.uk/2006/04/things-that-are-crossed-out-or-added.html

[JenB]

Do you mean as shown in this example? http://www.bafhs.org.uk/images/census%20page.jpg

The answer is that after the censuses were taken and the pages written up they were sent for statistical analysis (which was why the census was taken in the first place). As Groom has said, the clerks went through the pages and put markings on them as they extracted the data. If you could see the actual page you'd see that the markings are a different colour.

It has nothing to do with the entries being wrong.

[stanmapstone]

The marks on the page are made by the census clerk extracting occupations etc., not crossings out. On the pages of the original books these marks are in coloured inks, crayon, or pencil, and can be easily differentiated from the enumerators' returns but not on the monochrome images. You can see examples of 1901 census returns, in colour, with annotations at;
 http://www.rootschat.com/links/02fd/
 http://www.rootschat.com/links/02fc/   

Stan

[Rebecca Totten]

Do you mean as shown in this example? http://www.bafhs.org.uk/images/census%20page.jpg

The answer is that after the censuses were taken and the pages written up they were sent for statistical analysis (which was why the census was taken in the first place). As Groom has said, the clerks went through the pages and put markings on them as they extracted the data. If you could see the actual page you'd see that the markings are a different color.

It has nothing to do with the entries being wrong.

Yes it looks like that thank you. Im just confused as it is saying a drastically different age for the same person. So i presume they must have written it down wrong. On the 1851 and 1861 census it is 1816 the person was born, and on the 1871 census it changes to 1839. Really big difference yet its still the same birthplace and same people on the census as the other 2.

[Milliepede]

It's not a son with the same name as his father is it?  That would possibly account for an age difference. 

[groom]

Remember that the images you are looking at are pages from the enumerator's book and the information has been copied from the census filled in by the house holder. It is possible that the enumerator either couldn't read the original so wrote what he thought it said, or made a mistake when copying it.