Housekeepers? Excuse my ignorance!

[Edrubava]

I came across a few pages on the 1901 which have me stumped.  There are 8 pages and a great number of the occupations are described as 'houskeeper' with what looks like 'caret' added in some cases (I think) afterwards 

The majority are men   

It's in the City of London - St Michael Cornhill, St Mary Woolnoth and St Mary Woolchurch Haw.

I've had a look around online but can't seem to find anything. 

Would love to know what this means.

Many thanks 

[rosie99]

I suspect that Caret is Caretaker.  Can you give us a reference so we can look at the full entry 

Rosie

[stanmapstone]

"Caret..." is an annotation added by the clerk in the census office classifying occupations, and will likely be in a different colour on the original. It is probably short for caretaker. You can see that Messenger has been classified as Port(er).


Stan

[stanmapstone]

From the OED Housekeeper; 4. A person in general charge of a house, building, business, etc. Also: a caretaker.
A housekeeper is traditionaly female, and this annotation has been added to the male entries.
Stan

[gaffy]

I think it's caretaker too, there's some consensus in previous threads, for example see here:

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,469621.0.html     (reply #8)


http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,89372.msg378434.html#msg378434     (reply #11)

[Edrubava]

Many thanks to rosie99, Stan and gaffy for your replies.  I usually do a Rootschat search when I get stuck but I forgot in this case 

By reference Rose - do you mean the person I found?  Don't know how to give any other reference numbers that I see so often on here 

Anyway, it seems that it's answered and is 'caretaker' - I just found it strange that there were so many over those 8 pages.......

Many thanks again. 

[mazi]

the clue I think is in The city of London, many financial transactions were by word of mouth, but all the paperwork was exchanged between banks ,stockbrokers etc, by messengers, porters, caretakers, housekeepers, the job title varies according to the traditions of the institution.

In a large provincial town in the 60's each bank in the town had a messenger who carried cheques around the town for instant presentation to the originating bank.
one was a housekeeper, two were messengers and one was porter, from personal experience

mike

[Edrubava]

Aha - that makes it clearer Mike - thanks! Very interesting.  Now I understand why there were so many in a small area - and I note that the Royal Exchange was included in that particular enumeration district so maybe that's another reason.

Thanks again