Silly census question

[jesika jae]

Can anyone think of a reason, sensible or otherwise, why an entire family would be missing from the 1911 census, please? The only thing I could think of was that the adults were in support of the Suffragette movement, perhaps not likely for a miner, his wife & rapidly growing brood of offspring.
Any and all ideas welcome!
Thanks in advance
jj
100416

[JJen]

Hi,

Have you tried searching using only christian names and other details like birth year, place of birth, likely residence, family members?

It could be that there is an error in the transcription.

JJ

[philipsearching]

As the 1911 census was on single sheets filled in by each householder the sheet may just have got lost.

If there are electoral rolls surviving it may be possible to find the adult males.

Hope this helps.
Philip

[ScouseBoy]

In any Census, there will always be people  who refuse to complete the forms.

Some Enumerators will be slap dash and be less than enthusiastic and less than efficient.
What percentage would you estimate that the Census themselves give for  errors and omissions?

[Guy Etchells]

One reason could be that part of the 1911 census is missing.
Try searching http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/ using the Census ref RG 14 and the word missing.
Perhaps just a page is missing from the census and has not been noticed

Perhaps they moved or even emigrated for a period of time.

Cheers
Guy

[clairec666]

My first instinct is that they aren't missing, but are just proving difficult to find! Perhaps the head of house had awful writing which is difficult to transcribe. Perhaps (as some of my relatives did) they only gave the initials of the first names, or wrote the surname before the first name.

If you need tips for searching, we've got plenty! (Lots of practise...) First I'd say, use a different website to search from them, i.e. FindMyPast or Ancestry. The transcriptions are different, so if your family aren't easy to find on one site, they may be on the other.

[ScouseBoy]

Several weeks after each main Census  a small sample "check" census is undertaken.   Probably a computer generates the addresses at random.

[stanmapstone]

Several weeks after each main Census  a small sample "check" census is undertaken.   Probably a computer generates the addresses at random.

Not in 1911. The first comprehensive attempt to check the quality of the census results in Britain was made following the 1966 sample census. A rather less rigorous check was made following the 1971 Census but, in 1981, a full post-enumeration census was conducted.

Stan

[ScouseBoy]

As far as I  can recall, in 1971,  a specially selected and meticulous officer was given a list of addresses in each Borough and conducted an exercise with the aim of doing quality control.   Presumably, the two different results would be compared and contrasted.    Then a margin for error could be calculated.