Names of people deleted from the censuses

[Steeple1]

Being old, I have a lot of it so I spend many hours trawling Ancestry and FindMyPast (+1939) looking for errors and submitting corrections. (Mainly only surnames)

Recently I tackled Ancestry. Some transcribers have included deleted names, others have not. Not only because of the value of occasional useful info sometimes noted, eg.  Now in service; or Dead, I think that they should all be transcribed. After all, some people may not get enumerated elsewhere due to oversight or death etc. 

I had two different views from Ancestry. One person said it was a great idea and would be passed upwards.
The other, that the material is subject to TNA copyright and cannot be interfered with. Nonsense IMHO.

Although accuracy is very important, I believe that transcripts need to veer more towards being helpful rather than being scholarly reproductions of what was written.

What do others think?

[davidft]

I am not altogether sure what you mean by "Some transcribers have included deleted names," but I fully agree with the second opinion namely "that the material is subject to TNA copyright and cannot be interfered with." There are enough mistakes on genealogical sites without people adding new information, probably unsourced, that is not easily checked.

Sorry if that is not the response you wanted.

[BumbleB]

Although accuracy is very important, I believe that transcripts need to veer more towards being helpful rather than being scholarly reproductions of what was written.

Transcriptions should be just that - transcriptions of what the transcriber sees.  Anything else could be fiction, and totally misleading.

As a transcriber myself, for FreeBMD, we are told that you type what you see - spelling mistakes and all.

[iluleah]

I completely agree with davidft and BumbleB transcribe what you see and how it is written so no creative licence to add what is not there.

[ReadyDale]

I may have misunderstood what Steeple1 meant, but my reading was (for example) in a 1911 entry, where the original householder has named someone, who has recently died or (although family) is working in service at the time of the qualifying date. This information has then been crossed through by the enumerator, as is not proper to the original purpose of the census (but is useful for our purposes).
Therefore this would not be "creative licence", as this is text that is actually there, but just not of use originally so has a line through.

[Steeple1]

Composite response.
I think this subject is more complex than you seem to find it.

'I am not altogether sure what you mean by "Some transcribers have included deleted names"'

In 1911 censuses there is a regular sprinkling of pages where eg. a whole family have been included but several names have been deleted, presumably dead or married and moved away or whatever. In some cases it may only be one person. As a serious researcher I'd be interested in every scrap of information.

1911 again, in Ancestry, occasionally a page is totally blank but the enumerator's slip gives a name and sometimes 'Gone away' or whatever. None of these names have been included. A monstrous omission.   

If the material is copyright, why are the public let loose onto it to make suggested corrections? What is the difference between a correction, and a request that a name has not been transcribed and needs adding?

Interesting that FindMyPast use the word 'reflect' on their corrections page:-
'We can only amend transcriptions where they fail to reflect what was actually written in the original record'.
I asked them what to do with a name, let's say it was Reed, where the second e had been neatly crossed through and letter i inserted over. How do you transcribe that exactly? In fact, the answer I got was such that the presumed Reid would not have appeared in its correct alphabetical place in the index.

In a family, where the wife's surname has been obscured / partly obscured by a blob, yet is clearly written in for the other members you seem to be Saying don't include it?

I don't remember the instructions for FreeCEN which are probably the same as those for FreeREG as it was so many years ago that I did work on GLS for them.

Here's another transcription poser. How do you deal with a name written in Cyrillic - which is somewhere in LND 1891 or 1901? And what about the several entries in Hebrew?

A search of names which include x or have letter x at the end are to be found wrongly transcribed by the use of sc - and in profusion. Look at Mascted, Riscon, Cosc etc. Many have the apparent s and c widely separated, so the transcriber is simply obeying the instructions and not using commonsense.

These sorts of probems abound. They are not just a few - there are many others - and they need sensible solutions so that targets can be found and not obscured by having been given rigid scholarly treatment. 

Maybe your Dodd is buried away somewhere because of a Jobsworth simply carrying out orders!

I would appreciate your observations on *all* of these matters.

[BumbleB]

Sorry, I'm bowing out of this thread.    Steeple1 - you obviously have your views, and possibly are not open to other's opinions.  However, I do hope that you have taken note of those who think that "you transcribe what you see" and don't elaborate on what is in front of you.

Bye 

[ReadyDale]

Sorry, I'm bowing out of this thread.    Steeple1 - you obviously have your views, and possibly are not open to other's opinions.  However, I do hope that you have taken note of those who think that "you transcribe what you see" and don't elaborate on what is in front of you.

Bye 

I fully agree with your sentiment, but as with many things in life, not every situation is black and white.
If that information is actually there (courtesy of the householder), just crossed through (courtesy of the enumerator), do you transcribe what you see or what you see 

After all, (to quote your signature) "transcriptions are merely finding aids" 

[chris_49]

The only examples I've seen of people deleted from the 1911 are when the parents have misunderstood the instruction "number of children born dead" and proceeded to list those dead children on the form amongst the living ones. The enumerator has noticed this and crossed them out.

Others slipped through, though...