Genealogy Chat

................but I never had!!!! See below in a mo.................. Merry x

I was listening to Radio 4 today (posh or what???!) They were talking about literacy rates in the UK over the years and made a VERY good point, that I had never really considered........ If your ancestor couldn't write (all those ''X'' marks in the registers and on certs), doesn't mean they couldn't READ!!! Whatever the literacy rate for writing, it was at LEAST DOUBLE (maybe treble) for reading (maybe not very fluently, but good enough). So all those times we have said, ''Oh the mother couldn't sign her name at the registrars and so didn't notice they had put her hubby's occupation down as Coal Miner when he was a Hairdresser'', might be a figment of our imaginations!!!! I don't suppose it makes a deal of difference to anything.......just thought it might be useful to know.............................. Happy Hunting Merry x

Worth bearing in mind thanks Merry Ann

Only one reply, Ann???????!! Merry x

Radio 4 well that is posh if i do say so myself. Being a hairdresser must have being very posh as well in then days to being a coalminer Helen

Thanks for your l-o-n-g reply Helen! Merry

sorry about that the enter button got stuck. It was a long one was'nt it Helen

Merry That's a good point. However, let us remember something else about 'those days'. There was a real, or maybe imagined, but common thought held by the 'better classes' that the lower orders were better off not being able to read or write. They might start getting uppity if they could and then what would their betters do for scullery maids and gardeners boys? The lower orders were thus often treated with suspicion if they said they could read and write, so many simply hid this fact. Another point is that the lower orders very rarely challenged or even corrected their betters and if the Registrar said 'make your mark' then that is what they did. And if he wrote their name incorrectly, they wouldnt have dared to correct him - he was 'better' than them, so must be right. A distant ancestor (the Holdens again, lol) who was a handloom weaver in the early 1700s, and a raging non-conformist, held a school in his cottage (for adults and children) to teach them to read (but not to write) so that they could read the Bible for themselves - a practice very much frowned on by the Established Church, who actively discouraged the lower orders from reading the Bible, because, when they did, they discovered that God did NOT say that they had to flog their guts out for their betters! I also came across a school in a village in the very early 1700s. It appears from the register that ALL the village children attended, at least part time, and practically everyone in that village was literate. Olde Crone

Cheeky :)

Hi Merry, also if they couldn't read or write they wouldn't know what the enumerator had written on the census forms, and with a strong accent it's no wonder my Onions were Amons and Iunions!!! Chris in very warm South Australia.

Not only are you really really posh listening to Radio 4, Merry, but a clever little sausage as well. I am sure I read recently (I think in one of those excellent books about life in the past in London) that reading and writing were taught as separate things and just because you couldn't do one, didn't mean that you couldn't do the other. Maybe we underestimate our rellies a bit.

Christine, surely your Onions would have started life as O'nion (Ive just typed a letter to an O'nion - so I know!). I was reading something somewhere, might have been local document and kids in the 19th century were giving little interviews to the writer about their life. Basically it seemed they were taught as much as they needed to know for an ag lab life - counting (necessary for livestock and numbers of potatoes etc.) and reading enough to practice their bible classes but little else. Some must have done better as my ag labs moved on in some cases to skilled work - but as you say there was a big non-conformist movement back then - I believe there were riots in parts of Norfolk over it. Reading about Sunday Schools in the east end docklands - it was interesting that they were started to not only teach the kids but to make sure once a week they had food in their belly. The popularity of these classes worried establishment so much - they thought the kids would be taught anti government, anti-knowing their places stuff - it led to the setting up of schools as we know them.