Jack of All Trades

[Liberty]

One of my cousins (William George Silvester) honestly has 'Jack of All Trades' as his occupation on the 1911 census. It has been annotated with the number '996' ('33' having been entered and then crossed out) so presumably the census-manipulators found a slot for this occupation

 

[Carla]

Love it....my mind is boggling at all the possibilities of what he actually did!

 

[Britjan]

I wonder if a LC member has ever found a relative who was the census taker/enumerator. I have been involved in going door to door in Canada for our last two censuses but I didn't put it as my occupation on my form for either!! Don't think any females could have been involved at least in door to door enumeration in the last censuses to be made public in either UK or Canada.

 

[Liberty]

Census taker is VERY much a part-time, occasional job. It certainly used to be that you had to be a public employee of some kind (local government, I think) so the main job would have been e.g clerk at town hall. Mundanely, it would probably have been the regular job that was entered on the census form.

 

[Cathy]

Yes - in the 1841 Census my great, great grandfather was an enumerator. He put down that he was a Collector. I'm still unsure what he meant. I have a range of occupations for him from Grocer to Schoolmaster back to Grocer and Oilman and at the same time Baptist preacher, later again a schoolmaster and later still a Baptist Minister. He and family moved around what were then the outskirts of London.
One of my frustrations with the online images is that they mostly don't include the page where the enumerator signed so I only have a poor copy of the signature from a microfilm. He was found in the days when one poured over microfilm for hours and days to find one family. Remember them? Now people think they can't find someone because they don't pop up in a search in a few minutes.

 

[Liberty]

Could be that he was some other sort of collector - e.g tax, rent - and this entry didn't relate to the census.

 

[Cathy]

I suspect so but it seems out of keeping with his other occupations apart from the fact he was obviously literate in an age when not everyone was.

 

[Britjan]

He was found in the days when one poured over microfilm for hours and days to find one family. Remember them? Now people think they can't find someone because they don't pop up in a search in a few minutes.

I do indeed remember the "whirr" of the microfiche reader and of course there were index cards to go through as well. All were part of the companionship of being with fellow researchers at a LDS library. I hope that forums like this create at least some of that same feeling.

I do recall that somewhere along the line by patiently clicking back through all the images uploaded for one of my 1881 census searches I did find some very useful instructions to enumerators that helped me pinpoint the location of a "Railway Cottage".

 

[Heather]

I do recall that somewhere along the line by patiently clicking back through all the images uploaded for one of my 1881 census searches I did find some very useful instructions to enumerators that helped me pinpoint the location of a "Railway Cottage".

Nowadays you could probably find it with an address search.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Yes - in the 1841 Census my great, great grandfather was an enumerator. He put down that he was a Collector. I'm still unsure what he meant. I have a range of occupations for him from Grocer to Schoolmaster back to Grocer and Oilman and at the same time Baptist preacher, later again a schoolmaster and later still a Baptist Minister. He and family moved around what were then the outskirts of London.

A collector in this context may have been someone who collected the completed forms from households to pass onto the enumerators who transcribed the individual household forms onto the the reports we are all familiar with.

 

[Cathy]

Not so, as he signed the form as the enumerator - and the handwriting is the same as all the entries for his section. He had good handwriting.

 

[Kate]

Hello. Wasn't sure where to add this but I had to share it as it amused me. A distant relative had the occupation of gardener, ratcatcher and dentist! I suppose pulling teeth and pulling weeds could be similar? Then he nipped out for a bit of rat catching. I realise a person had to make a living as best s/he could in the absence of the welfare state.