1851 How can 2 families all be described as vagrants when lodging with a family?

[Liz from Lancs]

Did vagrant mean something else back then?

Here is the census where two families staying with Patt Lavin:

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec/?htx=view&r=5538&dbid=8860&iid=CHSHO107_2159_2159-0116&fn=Patt&ln=Lavin&st=r&ssrc=&pid=12755743

[Jill on the A272]

I can only guess - maybe they were in outbuildings at that address.

[Liz from Lancs]

Thanks Jill - never come across this before.

[ozgirl]

Vagrant can be described as someone who constantly changes abode or occupation. Maybe they flitted from one job to another, but lived in the same place?

Linda

[Liz from Lancs]

That is another angle, Linda, thanks. It is interesting vagrant was put in the occupation section...and applied to all the children as well.

[Guest]

I find that really sad poor kids

[Liz from Lancs]

As they are all Irish, you wonder what they left behind...

[Liz from Lancs]

Yes Bob, I was thinking of that...but my memory is shocking for dates so I didn't dare be specific

Thanks for giving the ref.

[Cloggie]

As they were Irish, perhaps they were travellers.

"In eighteenth-century English accounts Gypsies were generally lumped together with Irish travellers and vagrants. But by the nineteenth century a series of powerful romantic notions about Gypsy life began to predominate."
See: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/stati...-traveller.jsp

Also see: http://books.google.com/books?id=eUc...grants&f=false

and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Traveller

And googling for travellers and vagrants brings up lots of other links.

[Liz from Lancs]

Thanks Cloggie - some really interesting info there. I was just a bit puzzled how they could be vagrants and lodgers at the same time.

[Cloggie]

It's just an idea - maybe the enumerator called them vagrants when they were actually travellers who were lodging somewhere temporarily?

[Liz from Lancs]

Think that must be it, cloggie.