Census help Completed with Thanks

[a chesters]

Could someone with better eyesight than me please work out what the occupations are?

For Mary Pilkington, it looks like smith to me, but I am 99.999% certain that is not a womans occupation.
For William Pilkington I have got as far as Cotton... but cannot make out after that

The two Stott girls are the same as william.

Any ideas will be gratefully accepted

A CHesters

[PrueM]

Hi A Chesters

Mary is "Ind" i.e. Independent.
Might William be a Cotton Merchant?
The two girls are "F.S." i.e. Female Servants.

Cheers
Prue

[a chesters]

Prue,

Thank you very much for that. Looking closely at the image, enlarged as much as possible, I can make out what you have seen.

Without you deciphering it, I certainly would not have got Ind. The enumerators markings are what made it difficult for me to work it out.
 William is a cotton merchant in the enlargement, but I would not have read the F. S. without your help.

Must get my eyes checked

Thanks again

A Chesters

[stanmapstone]

Without you deciphering it, I certainly would not have got Ind. The enumerators markings are what made it difficult for me to work it out.

Thanks again

A Chesters

The marks are made by the clerks in the census office, not the enumerator. 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

[a chesters]

Stan

Thanks for that. It does explain why some of the records are a little difficult to read nowadays. But I suppose the clerks were not looking to the future, with us poor people a hundred years later trying to read the returns

It does help to know the reasons.

A Chesters