Finding people with initials only on big returns

pinkypinky

You may or may not be aware that many people are recorded in the census by initials only. Returns of certain types of institutions including prisons, hospitals, industrial schools and army barracks do this.

However, it can be a massive challenge to find the right page on a large census return when searching for an individual.

Take an example: the Richmond Asylum (part of Grangegorman) shows 67 pages of returns. The first few pages are not even a census return but a copy of a letter (and in typical civil service fashion, the front and back of the envelope)!

You'll probably have identified your person by doing an initial search. In this case, it's helpful to put in the rough age and occupation, if known.

I did a search for "PM" roughly aged 25 and a plasterer. A hit comes back for the asylum but when you open the page of transcripts, it's a challenge to find the entry in context.

Expand out the results to show all the columns and search via your browser for the occupation. It returns 3 hits for plasterer and one is my candidate.

However, how now to extrapolate which page of the 67 page return to open?

Open a page at random and count how many entries. 28 approx. Go back to the transcription and do a rough page down count to find your entry again.
Then you can extrapolate which page to open.

When scanning the handwritten returns for the entry, it's quickest to search the occupation column.

However, in this case, something seems amiss: I found what looks to be the right page, but individuals on the image don't match the order of the transcription. There is also a plasterer on the next page, but he is separately transcribed.

Can anyone figure out what's going on here? I've sent the NAI an email about it.

Thomas from Presence

I've seen this practice in institutions on census forms across the English speaking world. It's almost like an inmate didn't deserve to be mentioned with their full name. Perhaps this was an early form of data protection?

I think if you have grounds to believe that someone belonged to you was in one of these places you'd need to get the records for the particular institution.

There's an epic but thoroughly interesting thread about getting records from Grangegorman on here. You might also try the North Dublin Union records on Findmypast.com

BrokenArrows

Lots of people on that page with Insanity caused by "Drink"

pinkypinky

Thomasfrompresence: I'm the mod of this forum, so I'm familiar with the Grangegorman thread, thanks.

My object here is to tease out ways to find people on the return, rather than the underlying record of the institution.

While it does look like data protection, I think it's at least partly laziness. There's hundreds of people in these places and filling out the census for each person is time-consuming.

tabbey

pinkypinky wrote: »

.
My object here is to tease out ways to find people on the return, rather than the underlying record of the institution.

While it does look like data protection, I think it's at least partly laziness. There's hundreds of people in these places and filling out the census for each person is time-consuming.

Finding the correct person is amatter of methodically going through the actual returns, looking for the age, occupation and county of birth.
One of my connections was a retired customs officer, born Co Roscommon, with reasonably uncommon initials.
If the person has initials JM or MK, born Dublin and a common occupation, it is obviously more difficult, and may be impossible to be certain.

As for initials, it was a matter of privacy, due to stigma in institutions, or security in the police and military.
In small communities it is usually easy enough to identify the local policemen, providing they had a wife and / orchildren.

Bicycle

I was looking through the initials in a military barracks for someone else. What I did was look at the ages first, then the initials. Letters can be confusing. But if you narrow it down by age first, it helps a bit. Particularly in places such as barracks or prisons or hospitals where there are a wide variety of ages.

pinkypinky

I think the problem I'm talking about is that the order of people transcribed does not match the order on the images.

I have often noticed this with smaller family groups but it doesn't matter when you're only dealing with a one page return.

The only way to find the specific individual I'm looking for on this big return is to read every page of it.