CENSUS STORIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 80, 24 May 1911, Page 5

CENSUS STORIES.

Tn a’ census of forty r odd million people it would l)e curious if there wore not some strange incidents and stories. The “Westminster Gazette” has collected a few choice specimens. An old lady at Northwich is said to have found it necessary to pay a visit to the churchyard to asccrtniVi how many of her children had died. The interest of the story is heightened by the fact that there were only four. An Ecclesall father, evidently determined to afford bureaucratic red-tape no opportunity for prosecuting him, informed the enumerator that his baby, born that day, was single. “Please, teacher,” began a census enquiry from a Liverpool Council scholar, “has what I do after school to go into the census?” “Well, what do you.do after school?” asked the' teacher. “Please, teacher, I go round with mesmerised milk.” Another man with a passion for thoroughness included in his return the names of all his sons and daughters-in-law, although those had homes of their own in other parts of the country. The “Manchester Guardian” reports that a householder wrote in the “infirmity” column the words, “garrulity,” “pertness,” and “vanity,” opposite the names of his wile and two daughters respectively, left the schedule on the mantelpiece, and went out. Let ns hope the family read it and profited by the revelation of his feelings. A very interesting contribution to the mass of information about the census is made by Professor Milligan, of Edinburgh, who Inis unearthed some material about the Egyptian census of 48, A. I). A householder had to swear to toll the truth, and to declare formally that he did not harbour any unscheduled person. The cook-general of the particular household was described as “Thermoutharion, a freedwomaii of the above-mentioned Sotades, about sixtyhve years of age, of medium height, dai k complexioned, long-visaged, a scar on the right knee.” Our census capers in these days are loss particular as to personal characteristics.