General Chat

can anybody advise why the same people on different census have birth years which can vary up to 7 years

Some reasons-

They may have knocked several years off their age to carry on working

They may have married someone older/younger than themselves & lied about their age

Birthdays were not so important; no retirement pension so they may have just forgotten their age

The enumerator may have guessed the person's age

The 1841 census did give a lot of latitude, especially for children, I think it was rounded up or down to the nearest five years - sure someone will correct me on this! so subsequent censuses could well be several years out.

And if you are going from the transcriptions, especially on Ancestry, there are quite a lot of misreadings

They are also often a year out depending on the month of birth, as the censuses were taken in the spring - in the Ancestry transcription 1911 my mum's date of birth is given as 1910, because she was in fact born May 1909 `

The other obvious one, is that you are looking at the wrong family.

I'm not saying that this is the case here, as census years can vary a lot, but there are a lot of threads appearing where members are looking for reassurance that there has been an error in the records, where in fact they are barking up the wrong tree altogether.

A funny and sad side to this age thing
A dear friend of mine had a friend who passed away last week they went to register his death with his twin sister and when his wife gave his age .....is twin laughted and said I hope not I,m 6 years older!!! even in death he made them laugh