1881 transcription has no age for an infant

Please could you advise on what to do in this situation? We are only meant to add transcribed info for 1881 to LC, since that is free to all.

One name is an infant, with no age given on the transcription, but 1 month old in the actual census. So I have entered zero in the age field on LC, since I cannot leave it blank, and should not use the handwritten info.

Is this correct please?

Thanks.

 

Yes. I have seen several instances of a blank age shown on the census transcription, mainly on Ancestry, I think. In all cases the age was less than 1 year. Specifying zero years or less than 12 months when entering details at LC will cause the YoB to be taken as the same as the census year, even if the birth was actually at the end of the previous year. The important thing is to enter details the same way as other members so that matches will result.

 

Where no age is shown on the Ancestry Transcription, check the original image where often (not always) you may find the infants age is shown in months, or an abbreviation of same like 3m and so on. If this is so, and I often find it is, then on LC enter (as it clearly asks you to do alongside the age) the number as (if say 3 months old) 3/12, 3m or 3 months. As Bryman states, this will often interpret as the Census year as I believe will a zero.

 

Thanks both. My understanding was that the 1881 transcription was free to all, but not always the original. In which case many people entering 1881 info on LC will not have access to the handwritten version and will not be able to write in the age in months (or years if that's the case) if there's a blank in the transcription.

Bryman, do you mean that if there's a blank on an Ancestry subscription, there might not be on, say, a FMP transcription? I had thought all the transcriptions were from one source.

 

No, that is not what I meant although there can be slight differences between Ancestry and FMP in some cases, in spite of them being from the same source. Errors in the transcriptions are sometimes notified and corrections can be made but Ancestry and FMP seem to handle that differently. I came across one such instance yesterday where a daughter with forename of Adelaide was transcribed as Adlicote (I didn't think that the hand-writing was that bad). If corrected, Ancestry would show the correction in parenthesis but FMP would just make the change and not indicate that it used to show something different. That can be a little disconcerting when members record information in LC from both before and after such a change but that is a very rare occurrence, so far.

I am not about to go looking for previously seen blank ages in census transcriptions but I think that I have only noticed them at Ancestry. If everyone enters such instances as having an age of "0 years" then the matching should take place correctly.

 

Thanks all of you for clarification.