Re: 1911 census: Improved penmanship

Wasn't it Graham P Davis who wrote:
In another posting, someone commented on the copperplate handwriting of a
forbear. From my experience over the past few days of looking at over forty
census sheets, this state of affairs seems quite common. The quality of
writing is, on the whole, much better than on the transcriptions.

There's a big difference in handwriting quality between these householder returns and the enumerators books that we've seen in previous censuses. One reason might be that the householder returns were written with the knowledge that enumerator would need to be able to read them. The enumerator sheets were originally only to be read by the guy that wrote them, for the purpose of producing the various summaries.

I suspect that when the enumerator books for 1911 become available that they'll be just as bad, both in terms of handwriting and misinterpretation of what the householder wrote, as those from previous censuses.

--
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure
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