condition as to marriage

[St Demon 4]

what credence do i put on a persons condition as to marriage on a census
either M S OR W could any of this information be wrong? If they are listed as the Head of the Family

[Janet]

It all depends what you know about these people in the first instance. Have you got marriage/death certificates for the person/people concerned?

My own grandparents are down as married on both 1901 and 1911 Census. However, I have found their Marriage Certificate which states both as spinster and batchelor in 1923! Is what they wrote down on census true or false? They could both have been married in 1901 and 1911 so what they wrote down could have been correct, but married to other people and not each other! The census asks whether married or not. It does not ask whether the couple are married to each other, if you get my meaning!! I know my grandmother married someone else in 1896 in London but was that marriage annulled enabling her to say she was a spinster when she finally married my grandfather in 1923.

Life can be very grey around the edges so whereas they may not be telling the whole truth , they may not be telling lies either!!

Janet

[Anne in Carlisle]

You always need to be aware that the ennumerator could have made a mistake in entering his data, or that the person could have lied for reasons best known to themselves. It is also often difficult to read the M from the W!

Really you need to take the information as a small piece of the whole. If one bit seems wrong but the rest is OK then the wrong info just MIGHT be a mistake!

Anne

[Janet in Yorkshire]

I have found census info to vary, and like most other things, the info is only as good as the knowledge of the person giving the replies!

Jay

[Little Nell]

Janet is right. It's also hard sometimes to distinguish between "Unm" and "Wid", depending on the handwriting.