I think the Glasnevin entries are taken directly from the Workhouse information when he was admitted in 1884.
The case for the 1884 North Dublin Workhouse entry, 1892 death and subsequent burial in Glasnevin being the Waterford James McLawrence, originally from Belfast, born appx 1808.
The 1884 Workhouse admittance entry is minimal and any detail is questionable, his age (born 1824) and marital status in particular. His Protestant religion and having no fixed residence are in our favour.
An earlier entry in 1879 also described our James, the shoe maker from Waterford as married even though his wife had died in 1876.
The page that contains the entry, the page before and the page after had an occupation assigned to every adult male. James is the single exception. For the 1884 entry 'none' is recorded. One of his other confirmed workhouse entries had 'none' also recorded. Anyhow the minimal effort to establish a trade, even a labourer, would indicate to me that they guessed at his age also. James as we know was a tramp and was probably treated as such by some administrators.
There are only a few James McLaren entries (including other surname variants) for the Dublin workhouses. These entries show that there was two elderly James McLarens active in the system. One was a weaver from Dublin and one was a shoemaker from Waterford. An entry is found for the weaver a few years after 1892 so this would rule him out. In any case a Dublin native is less likely to have no address than the tramp from Waterford. That just leaves our James.
I can see from the few confirmed workhouse entries that the age is inconsistent on the admittance and suggests its likely to be an estimate.
