Birth Place Workhouse?

[vallee]

must say I was surprised to see a couple of people on this census say they were born in a Workhouse ???
Is this unusual?
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec/?...id&pid=5556964

[Finbar]

Surprisingly common, Vallee.
This link may be of help.

[vallee]

hello and thanks Finbar
I am sorry but I didn't explain myself well ,what I meant was why would anybody describe themselves to a enumerator as being born in a Workhouse ??? why not just say the area ???

[Finbar]

Hard to say, at a distance of 100 years or more Vallee, but perhaps they took the request for their birthplace too literally, or maybe they were anxious to show they were not ashamed of their origins.

[Kit]

I'd say they answered literally.

Where were you born?
In a workhouse.
Where was the workhouse? or What county?
Kent.

If the people involved had never filled in their own census they may not have realised they could just say Kent.

[ElizabethHerts]

My great-great-grandfather's birth certificate states that he was born at Headley Workhouse in Hampshire. His father was the Master/Governor of the Workhouse!

[vallee]

thanks everyone thats the first census I have seen where it says that, mind you one says occupation Tramp and it looks like they were living under a Railway Arch ?????????
Poor things.
Alfred Kemp is I think my rellie it says he is a Shore Raker ??? have been googling but not made much sense any ideas ??? thanks

[Rachel]

Originally Posted by vallee

Shore Raker ??? have been googling but not made much sense any ideas ??? thanks

Beach Comber ?

[Finbar]

Did the Census entry relate to London, or another town with a busy river, Vallee?

Unsentimental Journeys; or Byways of the Modern Babylon, by James Greenwood, 1867

No matter the weather-blazing July or bleak December-there they are to be found as sure as the retreating tide, the same old faces, in the same squalid rags, from seven to seventy, raking their daily bread from the feculent shore of the Thames from Chelsea to the Pool. Gaunt, old-fashioned children, stalwart, brawny men, tottering old women, each may be seen daily battling with the rising river for a crust.

[Rachel]

Looks like it's the same as Mudlark

'A sewer cleaner or riverbank scavenger'