Abbreviation

[greyingrey]

I'm sure this is incredibly obvious to the rest of you, but I wanted to check. I've got a family on the 1841 census. The father is listed as an agricultural labourer....the son (aged 15) as "ML" (or at least, that's what it looks like) Would that be a manual labourer ?

[colin taylor]

Usually on the 1841 census there are two common abreviations which may mean very little other than they helped the family.. these are MS and FS which are male servant and female servant... may be ml is ms?

[greyingrey]

Thanks Colin. I had wondered if it could be an S, but I doubt it would be a male servant as the head of the household was an agricultural labourer & there are 3 other MLs /MSs in the household. As the man I was asking about had the same surname as the head of the household, I was assuming it was a son who was born 2 years before his parents officially tied the knot....but I doubt that because I've looked at the marriage entry & it seems the parents were living in 2 different parishes.

So I was thinking that ML could stand for Male Lodger & he was some kind of relative....maybe an orphaned nephew or cousin etc ? (....all I've got for his birth & the birth of the head of the household & his wife is "Notts").

Anyone come across ML as "Male Lodger" ?

[Elaine ..Spain]

I would agree with Colin that it is probably MS.
Can you give the census reference or a link to it.

[Olde Crone Holden]

I agree with the others, it's MS for male servant. That was his occupation, not his relationship to the head of the household. (Relationships not given in 1841)

Capital S and captial L are often indistinguishable in Victorian handwriting, leading many a newbie to think their ancestor was a Lawyer when he was in fact a Sawyer, lol.

OC

[Janet in Yorkshire]

MS was often used to describe unmarried ag labs who didn't have their own home. As there are 3 in the household, perhaps the head of house was the hind, who provided bed & board for the unmarried workers?
(These may have included a son, nephew etc with same surname as head of house.)

Jay

[greyingrey]

Thanks everyone.....Janet's explanation seems to be the most likely & I'm happy to accept this (help patronisingly accepted !) If anyone does want to look at the entry, if you look on the 1841 census on Ancestry & look for Thomas Hudson born 1832 in Ruddington Notts & still living there....father William Hudson. For some reason best known to itself, Ancestry throws up a Thomas Hudson living elsewhere in Notts as the first choice...this one is the second. The one I'm interested in is John Hudson...I'd assumed he was William's (the head's) son, but he would have been born 3 or 4 years before William married....that's why I was interested in whether he was classed as a lodger. I've found out from the 1851 census that John was born in Kingston on Soar, Notts....& I'd really like to know what relation he was to William

[greyingrey]

Or do people mean they could have worked as servants elsewhere ?

[Olde Crone Holden]

Yes, they could have worked anywhere but PROBABLY worked in the household where they were enumerated. In my farming families, certainly, it was customary for the sons to go off as servants to another farm - usually a relative's - to get a bit of training (and also, I suspect, to lay up a bit of goodwill in case of hard times).

OC

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Having looked at the image, the family probably live next door to the farm house, so I think they provide board for 3 single young men, one of whom is their son.
In my part of the country, Male Servants (and late recorded as Farm Servants) always lived in - bed & board was a part of their wage, which was paid yearly. Ag labs lived in their own home (often a tied cottage) and they were paid fortnightly, monthly.

Jay

[greyingrey]

Oh, I see OC....the head of the household here was only an agricultural labourer. Do you think the others mentioned were likely to have been domestic servants at the farm he worked on ? Guess we'll never know that or if William was a "hind"

[Olde Crone Holden]

See Janet's reply above, with which I agree, lol.

OC