1881 Census - Transcription errors?

[Rosemarie]

Does anybody know if there were many errors in the transcription of the 1881  census? I've lost count of the number of errors I've come across in the 1901 census and I think this is generally acknowledged but I've never seen/heard anything about errors in the transcription of the 1881  census.

Marie.

[Chris in 1066Land]

Hi Rosemary

1901 Census was transcribed by people whose natural tongue was not English - I believe it was the Philipines, Korea or something like that - so lots and lots of very simple errors in the transcription.

1881 Census was transcribed by Family Historians belonging to Family History Societies in Great Britain, co ordinated by the Federation - i.e Kent FHS transcribed Kent, Sussex FHS did the same for Sussex etc.
Because the Federation did not have a big enough Computer Mainframe - putting it all together was done by the Mormon Church who produced it on fiche for the Federation for a period of years; and it was only sold through the federation.
After the required number of years (10 I think) the mormon church was allowed a licence to market it on CD and then via their web site.

So getting back to your original question - there are some errors on the 1881, but they are few and far between- unlike the 1901 which is full of them.

Chris in 1066Land

[Rosemarie]

Thanks Chris

Just trying to convince myself that a David on the 1881 census could actually be a mis-transcription of Daniel as all the other info on the family fits what I'm looking for. The possibility occurred to me when I was transcribing 1841 birth records for FreeBMD and on a first pass of a scan I read Daniel as David. When I was checking before transmitting the transcription I saw I'd made a mistake but if I hadn't checked minutely I wouldn't have.

I knew nothing about how the 1881 census was transcribed but it was obviously done a lot more carefully than the one for 1901. Are the original pages for1881 available in any form?
 
Marie.

[Chris1969]

There do appear to be transcription errors in the 1881 census, unless of course the errors were in the original enumeration.

I've found an Edmonds family transcribed as Edwards, which is perhaps understandable and also a Skingle family transcribed as Haighes !!

Regarding your David/Daniel dilemma, I have a Jeremiah Skingle, who appears as such in the 1841 and 1901 censuses and on his marriage cert and his son's birth cert., but as George in 1881 census and his son's marriage cert. Only until I had all those pieces of info was I content that they were the same person.

So perhaps he used 2 different names

Chris

[Boongie Pam]

I found a couple of interesting articles on this:-

http://www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk/data/census/census1881-limitations.htm

...specifically in the link above the use of the relation to head field was fixed, my families are always taking in waifs and strays so I need to check originals.

This is an excellent article on using the 1881 CDs as well as transcription problems:-
http://globalgenealogy.com/globalgazette/gazfd/gazfd32.htm

This is the start of a repository for corrections:-
http://www.apex.net.au/~tmj/cns-corr.htm
It gives you an idea of what type of errors you could find.

But this PDF gives an extensive list of errors found for surnames/ places of birth etc and a very full discussion on the 1881 project.

http://www.sog.org.uk/files/census1881mistakes.pdf

Hope this helps.

[Shirley Sweetland]

Hi My ancestors were transcribed as COSTETTS instead of COSTELLO on the 1881 census CD. I ordered the original microfiched copy from the LDS family history centre to check the record. It was clearly a case of bad handwriting on the original.

[Rosemarie]

I can recommend the sites listed by Boongie Pam in her response to my original question in this string. They are very useful as well as interesting and through them I was able to trace one of my families on the 1881 census after very many fruitless searches.

We all know about incorrect spellings of names and often try alternatives but it hadn't occurred to me that if the first letter of a name is incorrect it can never be found. I was looking for a family named Hatchell and, after visiting the sites recommended by Pam, I first of all substituted H with K and then tried M and up popped the family I was searching for. It had been recorded/transcribed as Matchell instead of Hatchell.

Brighter sparks than I am may have worked this out for themselves but I'm sure there are others it may not occur to.

Marie.

[PaulineJ]

The other way to look at it is work out how might you spell the name if you hadn't come across it before. In the past week I can across an irish-born Kostelow (Costello?), and a Mr Giggal (Giggle?, from Wakefield)

Mind you, that particular enumerator also has his own favourite variants - Davied and Bengeamon come straight to mind. My impression is that variations in spelling from census to census come about primarily from the enumerator's personal spelling habits.

So, a plea, don't necessarily blame a transcriber for 'errors' - it's a nightmare in there.

Pauline

[Rosemarie]

I've not yet traced the Daniel/David Roberts I'm researching on the 1881 censuswhich started this thread but I did manage to trace another family I'm researching as a direct result of my original posting. The family was shown incorrectly as Matchell on the 1881 census and incorrectly as Hatchill on the 1901 census. There are probably very many more errors in census transcriptions than we realise so use 'creative' spelling if all else fails.