Us genies do love a good oddball, don’t we? Over the last few days, Myko Clelland has been posting a lot of funny finds on Twitter which have kept us smiling here at FWL. So, we thought we would share some of ours too!
There are plenty of examples of unnamed children who have been indexed with first names from ‘name not chosen’, ‘name not fixed’, to ‘name undecided’ and such like. As we have written about before, the suffragettes left their mark on the 1911 census with ‘name not given’ and ‘name not known’ frequently appearing on the transcribed indexes, as well as ‘name refused’.
Jim the Cat features on the census with the Cooke family in Leicester in 1911:
There are plenty of other well-documented animals in the 1911 census, but the eccentricities of people are reported far less frequently so far as we can tell. However, there are three particularly interesting characters we have located:
Edith Absolon who clearly wears the trousers in the Absolon Torquay household, being referred to as ‘Boss’:
…. and poor Rose Hollick, servant to Charles and Daisy Morgan in Chingford did not know where she was born and, rather than a kind ‘unknown’ in the birth place column, the head of household gave a very blunt account:
…. and surely this can’t be Eliza’s real name?
Judging by her age and birth place (given as Codford St Mary), we would hazard a guess that she was probably Eliza GLADYS Baker, born in June quarter of 1907 in Warminster Registration District, along with her twin sister, registered as Florence Bessie. The fun never ends…. what to search for next!? [With thanks to FindmyPast for such wonderful indexing….]
