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General => Armed Forces => World War One => Topic started by: SmallTownGirl on Saturday 23 September 17 14:52 BST (UK)
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General question about ages on Attestation Papers:
I see things like "18 years 214 days".
Did the Attesting Officers have some sort of table to calculate the days, or did they have to count it out on a calendar each time. On reflection, wouldn't it have been simpler to record the recruit's date of birth, or just age last birthday?
Just thinking out loud really ;D
STG
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Many diaries show day of the year and days to go.
I have a pocket diary for 2017.
Today shows (267-98); meaning today is day 267 in 2017, and there are 98 days left in the year.
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Many diaries show day of the year and days to go.
I have a pocket diary for 2017.
Today shows (267-98); meaning today is day 267 in 2017, and there are 98 days left in the year.
It just seems such a faff ;D I'm all for a simple life, me - especially where maths is concerned ;D ;D
STG
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Simple lookups and arithmetic?! ;D
No of days left in the year at the last birthday; PLUS the number of the day in the current year; = the number of days.
Years as stated by the attestee!
E.G. my birthday is 22nd June - so day no 173.
If I were to attest today - day 266 this year.
266 - 173 = 93 days.
If my birthday were, for example, 1st November, then 1st Nov 2016 was 60 days from the end of the year.
266 + 60 = 326 days.
I just used last year's diary and this year's.
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Simple lookups and arithmetic?! ;D
No of days left in the year at the last birthday; PLUS the number of the day in the current year; = the number of days.
Years as stated by the attestee!
E.G. my birthday is 22nd June - so day no 173.
If I were to attest today - day 266 this year.
266 - 173 = 93 days.
If my birthday were, for example, 1st November, then 1st Nov 2016 was 60 days from the end of the year.
266 + 60 = 326 days.
I just used last year's diary and this year's.
You've made my head hurt ??? ;D
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They were good at mental arithmetic back then. It was a necessary skill for some jobs pre calculators, adding machines and electronic tills. The calendar sum would have been an easy one, being just addition or subtraction, compared to how many pounds, shillings, pence and farthings a quantity of something measured in pounds and ounces or yards, feet and inches or gills, pints, quarts and gallons cost.
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Mental Arithmetic was a separate subject at primary school, in my day!
And don't forget learning the Times Tables! ;D
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Blimey!
Back "in the day" (before & during mine) . . . . .
Most children ( adults )
a) could not read/write/spell
b) speak anything other than the local dialect/vocab
c) certainly could not " add up " ( let alone subtract / multiply / divide ) MENTAL arithmetic?
NOW, "We" cannot spell or know/understand grammar [ there/their with/of
. . . . should/would/must have/of ( = must of !!!!) ]
Even an old school friend spells the name of his school as "Harrow Grammer"
AND we were 1/2 mile UP the road. ::)
Switch OFF the US Word Dictionary !
"Canceled" ? ? ? ? ?
R
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Oh yes!
"The Times Table" was the hall table upon which "James" left the our family copy of the daily newspaper.
;D
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Metal arithmetic is certainly not a new skill. Many, many old tombstones and other records in the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries would have given a persons age in years, months and days.
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Metal arithmetic is certainly not a new skill. Many, many old tombstones and other records in the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries would have given a persons age in years, months and days.
Metal arithmetic is certainly not a new skill.
. . . . . however "typing" is . . . . . "MENTAL"
;D
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:)
My mental arithmetic's pretty good but I think I'd still want someone to invent some kind of wooden slidy thing that could do the work for me
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"Slide Rule"
Wood or "plastic" ?
:D
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We used Log Tables! (not wooden!!) ;D
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By "back then" I was thinking of about a century ago, i.e. WW1. Children spent 7 years at school having a basic education drummed into them. Even further back, in the previous century, long before compulsory education, elementary schooling was available for children at day schools and night schools for adults. Provision was patchy and basic. Attendance of many pupils was brief and irregular, but some of them would have learned something. Some schools were set up by employers. The owner of a coal mine in SW Scotland in 1840 only employed boys who could complete the application form in their own handwriting.
Miners at some Scottish pits paid a compulsory weekly school fee. If a miner had no child of his own to educate he could send a neighbour's child to school.
Working people were paid wages, they handled money, they managed household budgets, all that requires some arithmetic. Just because some of them couldn't use a quill pen to write their names it doesn't mean they were ignorant. :)
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We used Log Tables! (not wooden!!) ;D
Not for addition / subtraction though
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Metal arithmetic is certainly not a new skill. Many, many old tombstones and other records in the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries would have given a persons age in years, months and days.
Metal arithmetic is certainly not a new skill.
. . . . . however "typing" is . . . . . "MENTAL"
;D
The reason for metal arithmetic instead of MENTAL Arithmetic is due to that recent invention called spell-check ::)
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.....must have/of ( = must of !!!!) ].
Please Ray, I suspect you are out of date :) ... Recently I heard "must off" and "Marstova" (my spelling, of course, as my keyboard does not have text-speak enabled).
[ :) ]
JM
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We used Log Tables! (not wooden!!) ;D
Not for addition / subtraction though
My comment was in reply to a post about slide rules - which also don't handle addition or subtraction ;D
I can still remember that log 2 = 0.3010 :-\
Other numbers I remember:
Pi = 3.14159
Square Root of 2 = 1.414
Square root of 3 = 1.732
Square root of 5 = 2.236
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:)
My mental arithmetic's pretty good but I think I'd still want someone to invent some kind of wooden slidy thing that could do the work for me
What you need is an abacus. So they did have calculators "back then".
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Not just the army forms... this school admission is completely unfathomable! As its written, Richard Griffiths was 13 days, 4 months and 4 years old, on his last birthday ???
F m P has then transcribed his date of birth as 13 Apr 1904, even though the register is from 1876 :-X
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"We used Log Tables!"
We sure did, and slide rules, too. My dad gave me math tables and a slide rule for Christmas in 1963 and they served me well until 1981.
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Not just the army forms... this school admission is completely unfathomable! As its written, Richard Griffiths was 13 days, 4 months and 4 years old, on his last birthday ???
F m P has then transcribed his date of birth as 13 Apr 1904, even though the register is from 1876 :-X
Jomot, You mean you can't work it out....you were at the wrong school ;D That's a cracker!
I can still remember that log 2 = 0.3010 :-\
Other numbers I remember:
Pi = 3.14159
Square Root of 2 = 1.414
Square root of 3 = 1.732
Square root of 5 = 2.236
I dreaded Pi, E = MC Squared, Logarithms, Square Roots & anything else similar, gave me a headache & that was back in the day before calculators!
I'll stick with Genealogy Roots ;)
Annie
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Not just the army forms... this school admission is completely unfathomable! As its written, Richard Griffiths was 13 days, 4 months and 4 years old, on his last birthday ???
F m P has then transcribed his date of birth as 13 Apr 1904, even though the register is from 1876 :-X
Jomot, You mean you can't work it out....you were at the wrong school ;D That's a cracker!
Isn't it just! And if that's the standard of the admission register, the mind boggles at what they were teaching the children :o
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They were good at mental arithmetic back then.
There is also the mindset involved. In 1939 there were many refugee children from the European mainland in English schools.
At my mother's school it was noticeable, that the refugee children were (generally speaking) worse at mental arithmetic than the English pupils but much better at languages.
Arithmetic: The English children had had lots of practice in doing sums and conversions to and from pounds, shillings, pence and farthings a quantity of something measured in pounds and ounces or yards, feet and inches or gills, pints, quarts and gallons
etc, whereas the mainland children had mostly done mental arithmetic using the metric system.
Languages: English children couldn't "see" further than the English Channel ("if we talk English loud enough the foreigners will understand us") whereas mainland children were more used to crossing frontiers, interacting in different languages, etc.
Bob
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I suspect that school admission register was filled in by a school monitor or pupil teacher who has substituted children's ages for DOBs for some unfathomable reason.
The teacher of my class of 7- year-olds once gave me the task of marking my classmates' exercise books. It was a short-lived tenure. I was sacked after I wrote comments in them like the teacher did. A trusted pupil in the top class, (age 14) had the weekly responsibility of banking school dinner money. Practical arithmetic.
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General question about ages on Attestation Papers:
I see things like "18 years 214 days".
STG
My dad was born 1912 and it was common for him to quote years and days as you describe and occasionally include the hours too. I don't know whether it was his schooling or whether it was something to do with his engineering job.
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I suspect that school admission register was filled in by a school monitor or pupil teacher who has substituted children's ages for DOBs for some unfathomable reason.
It doesn't seem to be DoB as 13.4.4 wouldn't make sense in 1876, although as mentioned, it has been transcribed as a DoB of 13 Apr 1904..... ::)
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Reading the column headings, it was Age Last Birthday, and was supposed to be entered as Days, Months, Years.
Whoever filled in the form entered the age as Years, Months, Days. 13 Years, 4 months, 4 days.
Date of Admission is to the left, and entered as Days, Months, Years.
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Reading the column headings, it was Age Last Birthday, and was supposed to be entered as Days, Months, Years.
Whoever filled in the form entered the age as Years, Months, Days. 13 Years, 4 months, 4 days.
Date of Admission is to the left, and entered as Days, Months, Years.
The original printed column heading looks to me like "Date of Birth". "Age last Birthday " was written in ink over it.
There are a few anomalies on my GGF's attestation form. Answer to question married or single was "yes". His religion was wrong as well. He was discharged unfit 18 months later. I wondered if he was a bit deaf from a decade of work in mills (his daughter was) and he misheard some questions.
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Reading the column headings, it was Age Last Birthday, and was supposed to be entered as Days, Months, Years.
Whoever filled in the form entered the age as Years, Months, Days. 13 Years, 4 months, 4 days.
I see what you're saying, but I don't think its that either as a few entries down is a child with the age last birthday of 29 11 3, so if it was years months days, that would be a very old child! Another is 31 10 16.
Apart from anything else, most people are X years 0 months & 0 days old on their birthdays ;D
I think it is possibly meant to be age on admission expressed as days, months & years - in that order - as none of the numbers in the final column exceeds 16, although even 16 seems old for school admission in 1876.
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Before we criticise the US spelling dictionary we should remember that in many cases modern US spellings are spelling that were used in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Look at the word Labourer in many 19th century censuses, usually spelt Laborer in 1841 and 1851, less so later on).
There was no standard spelling before Dr. Johnson's dictionary, and standardisation only caught on gradually, with names it was usually what the clergyman or the registrar heard or thought they heard when the event was registered. I knew two brothers, one of whom spelled his surname Jessup, the other Jessop, there was no animosity, but both insisted they were right.