Can't read occupation

Would someone with an ancestry subscription and a moment to spare have a
quick look at Class: RG13; Piece: 4739; Folio: 42; Page: 37 at the Ford
family?
I'm interested in the occupation of John Ford. I can make out the
occupations of his siblings and father, but for him I get Coal Sci-?

Anne Chambers...

'Coal Screener', and in a different hand 'C Above'. (Others have 'C
Below) - obviously above/below ground in a coal mine.

Peter Goodey...

Agreed. A Coal Screener worked on sifting the coal.

D Marshall...

Thank you. That's very helpful.

D Marshall...

Thanks a lot.

I had worked out the significane of above and below - interesting as so
often the occupation just reads Coal Miner with no indications of the
range of different jobs in mining. It's good to find an entry where the
enumerator (i suppose it was he?) wanted to be more accurate.

Anne Chambers...

I don't know of any instances of an enumerator being female....anyone ???

Peter Goodey...

Female enumerators were permitted from 1891.

Bear with me, I think I may be able to find an example.

Peter Goodey...

Florence Nellie HOPSTROFF (HOPTROFF?) was an enumerator in 1891 in the
Tunbridge Wells sub-district. See RG 12/676 f 2 p i, if you're using film
or CD.

If you're using Ancestry, see the description of the enumeration district
under Kent, Ashurst, District 1.

Florence herself is enumerated on the same piece but her occupation is
not shown as census enumerator!!! :-)

David H Wild...

Surely that is right. Presumably being an enumerator is a **task** assigned

Peter Goodey...

Of course. Hence the smiley.

to someone whose permanent occupation may have nothing to do with censuses.

Anne Chambers...

Interesting. Thanks, Peter.

In a lot of cases, it appears that the actual enumeration sheets were
copied by children (certainly the handwriting seems to be immature),
perhaps as a handwriting exercise. I wonder how many of the enumerators
were schoolmasters ?

Incidentally, I ought to thank you, Anne. After you sorted out the
'Cluster of nuts' the other week I followed your suggestion to subscribe
to Ancestry and have been wallowing a huge amount of information.
Despite the oddities of the indexing, I've been delighted by the
discoveries I've made. Not least my great-grandfather's first wife,
still alive and living with her children in Winchester when he's
supposedly 'married' to my great-grandmother in london.

Anne Chambers...

Glad to have been of service :)

And isn't it nice when a skeleton (far enough removed) leaps out from
the closet...makes the ancestors far more human.

D Marshall...

The 'far enough removed' is right. In the Ford family instance that I
was looking at, the baby Elizabeth (daughter of the maid, Mary) came as
a severe shock to my mother-in-law (Mary was her grandmother).