Not Known

[maggie_4_7]

I have just come across a census in Essex where apparently the people didn't know their own names but did seem know their occupations but I can't read it and that they weren't born in county! :d

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec/?htx=view&r=5538&dbid=8978&iid=ESSCHO107_343_344-0427&fn=Caroline&ln=Clark&st=r&ssrc=pt_t17926036_p579380015_g32768_r_h_l&pid=16317072

It's second page mid way down does the occupation say Excavator? :confused:

[WendyPusey]

That's what it looks like to me too. Perhaps they dug holes!!

[maggie_4_7]

I find it totally bizarre unless of course the Enumerator forgot their names but not their occupations when he came to write it up.

[WendyPusey]

Perhaps they were just short term lodgers and no-one really knew their proper names.

[maggie_4_7]

Yes I suppose so and no one thought to ask before they filled it in. It didn't matter to them not then.

Can you imagine today they'd be an inquiry over the whole matter. Census returns with name: Not Known! or someone would be threatened with a £1000 fine or imprisonment... :d :d

[Jill]

Sounds like an encampment of railway builders or excavators of clay for brickmaking, I can just picture a collection of rough characters, enumerator could guess their ages & knew their occupation couldn't get them to give their names...

[Olde Crone]

I don't have an Ancestry sub any more so cannot look, but it does sound as if they were navvies on the railways or canals (excavators).

OC

[Uncle John]

It's 1841 so they are building the extension of the Eastern Counties Railway. There's a brickmaster and a Rail Road Clerk among the named people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Counties_Railway

[Olde Crone]

Oooh, I have a feeling that it was never ACTUALLY required for people to put their full names on the 1841 census, initials could be used.

However I suspect that the enumerator was just told "dunno" and wrote that down, rather than risk a smack with a shovel.

OC

[Val in Oz]

It was rather handy though that he wrote down if they were spinster or widow - even though it was later crossed through.

'NK' must have been those 'Mr Nobody's' who used to inhabit my home as a child and do all sorts of naughty things that I couldn't possibly have been responsible for.......:d