1911 Census - enumerated after death

[BeeJay]

The sister of my son's great-grandmother died as a child in Dec 1910. I have her death registration, a dated clipping from the local newspaper, and her burial record. I was surprised to find her listed with her family in the 1911 census, which was taken in June 1911. It's definitely the same girl as the name, age, and birth month/year match and there was no second child with this same name.

Is it possible the census for this town was taken 7 months earlier than indicated? The only mention I found specific to the 1911 census is that enumerators in the Territories were allowed to start early, but my record is for a town in Ontario.

My only other idea is that when the person collecting information asked for all family members the parents misunderstood and included their recently deceased daughter. Has anyone else come across this?

[Peph]

I've not come across that exactly, but discovered something comparable while compiling a tree for friends recently: included in their extensive collection of family photographs is one of a five year old girl in her best dress, hair immaculate, lips painted and - yes, you've guessed it - eyes closed because she's dead and embalmed and presumably awaiting burial. Most macabre.

I really do hope they didn't frame it and display it on the sideboard.

[v.wells]

I've not come across that exactly, but discovered something comparable while compiling a tree for friends recently: included in their extensive collection of family photographs is one of a five year old girl in her best dress, hair immaculate, lips painted and - yes, you've guessed it - eyes closed because she's dead and embalmed and presumably awaiting burial. Most macabre.

I really do hope they didn't frame it and display it on the sideboard.

Truly macabre and just plain creepy!

[Mary Anne]

Sometimes instructions to enumerators included that they should enumerate people who had died "within the year" but I don't know if this applied to the 1911.

[Chris Doran]

There is a "Hammer House of Horror" (or similar) film based around what is described as a Victorian practice of taking photographs of the dead. I'd assumed it was just made up for the sinister plot of the film, but maybe it has basis in fact. I guess people might do it if they didn't have a recent photo of someone while they were alive.

[Sandra Parker]

One of my G Uncles listed the whole family, including 1 living away in service and 3 who had died. Someone, the enumerator?, had crossed out those who were not in the house including the children who were dead These were still easily read. The result - I have lots more details and clues to the family.
It could have been that they put the family who did live in the house, and there was no macabre reason, merely the person was filling in the form as they thought correctly, as they had been asked about all the children in the family, columns 7, 8, & 9.

Sandra with the spectacled aura

[Lesley Robertson]

Is it possible the census for this town was taken 7 months earlier than indicated? The only mention I found specific to the 1911 census is that enumerators in the Territories were allowed to start early, but my record is for a town in Ontario.

My only other idea is that when the person collecting information asked for all family members the parents misunderstood and included their recently deceased daughter. Has anyone else come across this?

How old is the child shown to be? Age-at-death or age-if-hadn't-died?

All sorts of odd things turn up in the census -people counted more than once because they were list at home and where they were visiting, that sort of thing, but I've never heard of a ghost being enumerated before...

I suspect that your second option is the correct one.

Lesley

[Lesley Robertson]

I've not come across that exactly, but discovered something comparable while compiling a tree for friends recently: included in their extensive collection of family photographs is one of a five year old girl in her best dress, hair immaculate, lips painted and - yes, you've guessed it - eyes closed because she's dead and embalmed and presumably awaiting burial. Most macabre.

I really do hope they didn't frame it and display it on the sideboard.

I suspect that they did. There's a book of early S.African photos around which includes similar pictures of a couple of dead children, and one of a young woman sitting watching what looks like a sleeping child, until your brain catches up with you and you realise that it's not a crib the child is lying in... I've seen another version of the same picture and you can clearly see the frame.
Folk in Queen Vic's time had a different attitude to death, and if you had no other picture of your child it might have seemed better than not having a photo at all. Don't forget how new photography was, then.

Among the thank you notes to a group I photograph war graves for was one from someone saying that their very elderly relative was very grateful for the photo of her husband's gravestone. She's had the picture framed and put on her bed side table because it is all she has of him other than her marriage cert - a very young bride left at the start of the war with babies to raise, and never any money to travel to a foreign cemetary.

Lesley

[Ladkyis]

Some wealthy victorians had wax masks made of their dead child's face and then this was made into a porcelain head for a doll. They then dressed the dollin clothes from the dead child and put it inot a glass cabinet in their drawing room.

My ex daughter-in-law was given one of these dolls as a family heirloom and she had it in a glass cabinet in her sitting room. She had grown up with this thing in the house and saw nothing strange about it. I had to cover it up when I stayed there because I just could not keep looking at a dead baby while she saw it as her great grandmother's china doll.

I never told her what it really was

[BeeJay]

How old is the child shown to be? Age-at-death or age-if-hadn't-died?

I suspect that your second option is the correct one.

Her birthday was in September and she was five years old when she died in December 1910. She would still have been five at the time of the census, had she lived. I'm also thinking that the second option, a misunderstanding, is the most likely explanation.

Thank you everyone for the interesting stories and comments!!