Mappy Monday - some links

Instead of digging a map from my own collection, I thought I would link to some map and map-related sites instead. Here are a few of my favourites, in no particular order.

Historypin

Digital collections of historic maps

Maps for research (UK)

Old Street Plans (UK)

A vision of Britain through time

London: a life in maps

MAPCO (London)

Booth poverty maps (London)

Maps of Scotland

Historical Map & Chart Collection (USA)

Library of Congress map collections

Bostonography

I put this list together in a few minutes, from my favourites list. Maybe you'll find something here you didn't know about before - I hope you find something you like. But if you want to read an article by someone who really took some time and trouble over it, I recommend:

Mapping out the past, a post from Kith and Kin Research (aka Luke Mouland).

1911 Scotland, England and Wales - nearly the same, but not quite

We're almost there, the 1911 Census for Scotland will be released (fingers crossed) within hours now, not days. Scotland'sPeople is bracing itself! I wish I could be in Edinburgh for the launch, but the day job takes precedence, and at least I hope I will be able to access it remotely. The site will be under quite some strain to start with, I expect, and if we can't all get access immediately...well, it's been closed for a century, a little longer won't hurt.

By now many of us are familiar with the 1911 Census for England and Wales, so we have a pretty good idea of what to expect. There is one important difference, which is that as in previous census years, the Scottish census was copied into enumerations books, and the household schedules were destroyed. This was an administrative decision by the General Register Office for Scotland. The information gathered was much the same as in England and Wales, and the tabulation was done by machine, as in England and Wales. The extra information gathered was a significant increase on previous censuses, so it will be pored over gratefully by Scottish family historians, myself included.

The lack of household schedules means that we won't be able to see our ancestors' actual handwriting, which is a pity, but a greater pity is that when the enumerators wrote up their books, they will have left out the details that had not been asked for. By this I mean the widows who provided the length of their marriage, and the number of children they had, living and dead, when the question was only addressed to married women. On the English and Welsh schedules these were crossed out by the enumerator, but are still clearly visible.

Birthplace questions - England and Wales

There are some differences in the questions, too.

Like the schedules for Wales, but not England, the Scottish census contains a language question; whether a person spoke English, Gaelic or both. The questions on birthplace and nationality are subtly different, though, more details being asked for in England and Wales, with one exception.

On the schedules for England and Wales the parish of birth is required for anyone born in the United Kingdom. Anyone born elsewhere in the British Empire is asked for the name of the Colony or Dependency, and the Province or State. If born in a foreign country, the name of the country is all asked for, and anyone born at sea is required to write 'at sea'.  

Unfortunately the Scottish census asks for the parish of birth only from people born in Scotland. Anyone born in England or Ireland is only required to put 'England' or 'Ireland'. There is no mention of Wales at all, so it may be assumed to be part of the well-known administrative unit 'EnglandandWales'. Sorry, Wales. Like those born in foreign countries, people born in Colonies or Dependencies are only asked for the name of the country, unless that country was India. And this is where Scotland requires extra information; the Indian-born are asked to state whether or not they were of European origin.

Birthplace questions - Scotland

In both countries, foreign-born people are asked for their nationality; whether British by parentage, naturalized British subject, or of foreign nationality, and if so, which nationality. But only in England and Wales are naturalized British subjects asked for the exact year of their naturalization, and those born outside England and Wales are to state whether they are residents or visitors.

These discrepancies in the questions will make no difference to most researchers, and there is still a lot more detail than in any previous Scottish census, so we will all have plenty of new toys to play with (you did stock up on ScotlandsPeople credits before the price went up on Friday, didn't you?). The difference that will affect most genealogists is that sadly, those of us with Irish-born ancestors in Scotland can't expect to discover their exact birthplaces here. Pity. Oh well, it's back to fiendish ingenuity and the power of prayer again.

Happy Census Release Day, fellow Scots. I'm sure it's going to be PDB* for some of us.

*PDB = Pure dead brilliant!

A question of nationality

I have just read a very interesting and thought-provoking blog by Polly Kimmitt He's not American. Is he Kenyan, English or Irish? The whole business of nationality can be much more complicated that you might think. In the UK we have the added complication of the four home nations, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Most of us identify ourselves with one of these, although our nationality is British, as a glance at a passport will confirm. The full wording is 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' but I must admit I was glad to be able to tick 'Scottish' on my census form last week.

I have lived in England for most of my life, but I have never considered myself as English, and I never will. British, yes, but never English. I like it here, though, and I have no plans to leave; the natives seem to have accepted me. My young nephew, on the other hand, has absolutely now doubt that he in English. Fair enough, because he was born in England, and so were both of his parents, but that is a s far as it goes. But none of his grandparents came from England; one set were Scottish, the other Irish. So he could qualify to play football for any of three counties, and who knows, he might do so one day, because he's a pretty good footballer. Sorry Wales, you don't get a look in.

The whole sporting thing gets more confusing the more you look at it. In the Olympic Games and some other sporting events we compete as the United Kingdom (sometimes referred to as 'Team GB', which is wrong of course, and must annoy Northern Ireland even more than it annoys me). But in others, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland send separate teams. Except for Rugby League and Rugby Union, where Ireland is represented by combined teams drawing players from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Don't spend too much time thinking about it, it will make your brain hurt.

Sporting allegiance and national identity may be important to the way you feel, but the hard legal facts of nationality law can affect where you are allowed to live. Many of the enquiries we deal with at The National Archives are not from genealogists, but from people who need to prove their right to British nationality, or their right of residency in the UK. We hold certificates of naturalization and of nationality issued up to 1983, and there are lots of different kinds, depending the kind of certificate and where it was issued. It also depends on the legislation that was in force at the time. It's a complicated business. There is a Wikipedia article on British Nationality Law that explains it, but you need to set aside a good long time to read it all. Like I said, it's a complicated business.

To add to the fun, there are many anomalies in the relative status of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and the relations between them. Britain used to be a colonial power, and when they gained their independence most former colonies and dominions became members of the Commonwealth. The Republic of Ireland, however, is not, and has never been, a member, and distanced itself from the UK to the extent that it remained neutral during the Second World War. Despite this, there has always been free movement between the two countries, and until 1978 the two currencies were of equal value, even adopting decimalisation at the same time. Irish people who lived in the UK could vote in elections here, even before our two countries joined the European Union.

In her blog, Polly describes the complications that arose because her British husband was born in Kenya, while his father had been sent there to work by the British government. Something similar occurred in a family that I am related to, where the father was Irish and the mother British. Two of their children were born in England, but one was born overseas, because her father, an Irish citizen, was a soldier in the British  Army and was stationed there at the time. She had no idea that this could cause a problem until as an adult, she applied for a passport, and discovered to her surprise that legally, she was not actually British. It was sorted out in the end, and she did get her passport, but it makes you think.

Shopping Saturday - between boards

I came across an interesting little article while browsing through a magazine called 'The Leisure Hour', dated 1887. That's the kind of thing I do in my spare time.

It describes a largely forgotten aspect of the retail trade, the way that some shops promoted their wares. The writer describes a scene at 5:30 in the afternoon near Piccadilly Circus.

Two hundred [men] with boards and bills of various colours, are in front of me. They march down into a yard, fall into double lines like a regiment of soldiers, and take off their boards. Every man stands with his board in front of him. a man comes and inspects them when all are in, and soon the process of paying begins.

It is clear from the illustration that these men were a sorry lot. Many were former soldiers who did this work because it was better than not working at all. They were lucky to have been picked at all, since as many were rejected each morning as selected. The best dressed men had the best chance of being picked, and could earn the princely sum of 1s 2d for a day's work walking the streets. They could earn a little more, 1s 6d, if they were prepared to be 'dressed up and made into guys'. For the extra 4d a day they would endure the looks and remarks, and run the risk of being recognized by someone they knew. From 9 till 5, with and hour for lunch they were required to be on on display. If they were caught skulking, they might get no work for several days. These men were recruited and paid by agents, who seemed to make a tidy profit; the men were paid 1s 2d for a day's work, but the cost to the retailer was 2s.

This is a little-known aspect of retail history, and not a very happy one. For the men who did this often degrading work it was not just a low-paid job with a high embarrassment factor. If it was known that you had once 'carried the boards', it could harm your prospects of getting a respectable job in future. The sandwich-board men are often portrayed as figures of fun in cartoons, but I am not sure I will look at them in the same way again. So spare a thought the next time you see someone on a street corner holding one of those big 'Golf Sale' signs, or handing out leaflets in a shopping mall while dressed as a chicken. They are the the modern counterparts of the sandwich-board men, and it probably isn't their ideal career choice either.

A Census April Fools' Day joke?

RG 11/20 fol 126 p 48 (image courtesy of Findmypast.co.uk)              

This looks much like a lot of other census pages, but if you examine it closely you will see that is is very odd. In fact, it is a fake. I first became aware of it after the 1881 census was indexed, and it was the subject of some discussion at the time. I don't know if anyone had picked it up before then.

The image is not easy to read, because the film from which it was scanned is faint, but you can make out enough to see that it is not a genuine part of the 1881 census. First, look at the address, 16 Acacia Gardens; there is no Acacia Gardens in Paddington in 1881, and this page is the only one that shows this address. If you browse the images around it, you will see that it is almost at the end of the enumeration district, with a blank page after it. The page before is the real end of the enumeration district, with the last four names from 4 Poplar Square. The description of this enumeration districts lists all the streets it contains, and the list does not include Acacia Gardens.

Next, the entry itself. The names themselves are perfectly normal and plausible (although you'll have difficulty finding these people in any other census), but the ages of the family are not implausible, to say the least. Now look at the birthplaces. Timbuctoo is s real place, but it is hard to believe that anyone would have six servants who were born there. And you don't see 'Australia (penal colony)' given as a birthplace very often. But the real giveaway is Pakistan, which didn't exist in 1881.  You might also find it hard to credit the occupations of Robert Goodman snr and jnr, given as 'International playboy' and 'Ponce' respectively.

And finally, the handwriting is not only quite different from the rest of the district where it appears, it also has a very 20th century look about it. So the the only conclusion is that at some point before the 1980s, when this census was filmed, someone vandalized the original document. It was crudely done, and therefore doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, but it does make you wonder if it was an isolated case.

If nothing else, it is a timely reminder that you can't always take the information in a document at face value.

Did I ever mention the documents in The National Archives that we know are forgeries?

Maybe some other time...