The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-04-15 00:00:00

TAKING THE CENSUS.

One of the census enumerators supplies to the Daily News
an account of his experiences iu that capacity. Ile says:—
" I was so struck with the tidy, well.written return
given me by a poor bricklayer's hodman this morning,
that I couldn't help asking him whether he had filled
it up himself? ' I giv' a man in our court who is a
good schollard a pinny, our, to do it for me!' was the
reply; and during the day I discovered this to be a
common practice. My official instructions were to
render every assistance I could—even to filling in the
return to dictation when the people were not able to
write; but this has been rarely necessary. Heady
penmen have come to the front with the occasion, and
a brisk trade has been done in filling returns at a penny
each, the public scribe finding his own ink and pens.
It lathe ladies—God bless them! of course—and the
would-be gentilities who have bothered me most, and
who have seemed most obstructive. Take cooks, for ex-
ample. I don't know whether there is anything in the
practice of roasting and boiling which inclines people to
mendacity ; but in the course of my rounds the cooks
have been more perverse than any of their fellows.
they all made themselves so absurdly young, and in the
very few instances in which I hesitated a doubt as to
whether a palpable forty-year-older was justified in
describing herself as twenty-seven, the barefaced way
I in which the effect of a kitchen fire on the complexion,
I and the consequent 'ageing' of the appearance, were
put forward, was absolutely staggering. It was no
I business of mine to impress upon these audacious
women that everyone giving incorrect information, or
making a wilful misstatement of their age, is liable to
a penalty of In, besides the inconvenience and annoy-
ance of being brought up before two justices ot the
I peace; but I may say now that there are certain of
my constituents whose baptismal certificates I mean to
look for, and that I shall be disposed to act as the law
directs if there has been anything wrong. I met other
odd people whose peculiarities were, as I thought, re-
markable. There was the old lady who would tell me
stories of the sad cases of destitntion she had known of,
and which had arisen from the hood of a family signing
his name incautiously at the request of someone else.
I had the greatest diffioulty in persuading her that a
census paper is not a bill of exchange, that I was not
trying to coax her out of her acceptance, and that she
would not be liable to pecuniary loss. There was the
pragmatical little man, too, who lodged over the
butcher's shop, and who insisted on describing himself
as gentleman' in spite of that vague phrase having
been expressly forbidden in the printed directions. He
was a retired haberdasher, and he did not like to say
so; while shopmen who would call themselves
' assistants ; ' the people who boggled over trifikl, and
who could not be made to understand either the
responsibility of a written statement or the value of my
time—all these belonged to the half-educated classes.
The two extremes of society performed their part
towards the Census-office cheerfully and satisfactorily,
and the shortcomings (which have after all been very
inconsiderable) all arose among those who were
uncertain as to their social position, and feared writing
themselves down to the world."