The disappearing Mortons

[Phoenix]

George Morton married Sarah Benton 15 November 1838 in Watlington, Norfolk, by licence with crowds of relations witnessing the event:

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...pId=1504295247

They had four children:
Sarah Ann Elizabeth bp 4 Oct 1839
George b 1840
Louisa b 1843
Malvina b 1846

They had moved to Downham Market by 1846, as Malvina was born there, and in 1851 George (born Emneth) was an innkeeper, running the Railway Hotel.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...77?pId=5378992

By 1861 they were in Outwell, where George was now a farmer. Sarah Ann was described as a visitor in the house of her aunt in Downham, but the rest of the children were still at home:

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...8?pId=16614129

In 1871 they are in Guyhirn, Cambridgeshire. George's farmer is 175 acres and he is employing 4 men and a boy. Only the two youngest are still at home:

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...AMRG10_1614_16 16-0096?pId=8068610

But where is Sarah Ann? Her aunt, known as Mary Ann Roberts, is all by herself in Downham
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/discovery...=successSource

(but she names Sarah Ann as her executor, when she dies a few years later)

Sarah Ann marries Edward Enfield in 1880, and shaves ten years off her age. Unsurprisingly, since she was over forty, they had no children together.

Edward is another innkeeper. In 1881 he is running the Horseshoes, Cambridge Street Godmanchester in Huntingdonshire.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...40?pId=7453893

Living with him is "mother" Sarah Mor(e)ton, "wife of dairyman"

This time, it is George, born c 1817 in Emneth who has disappeared.

Sarah Morton is widowed by the 1891 census, and there is the death of a George Morton aged 70 in the Wisbeach RD in 1883, which is probably him.

So...
Can anyone see Sarah Ann Morton b 1839, Watlington, Norfolk in 1871?

Or George Morton bp 1816, Emneth, Norfolk in 1881?

I've looked under every variant I can think of, but cannot turn up anything and would welcome fresh eyes.

[Phoenix]

NB on 16th April 1881, it was reported that the licence of the Horseshoe inn was temporarily transferred from Sarah Ann Morton to Edward Enfield, her husband, so she must have been running it as a singlewoman before she married him. In the marriage notices, there is no mention of her father.

[Phoenix]

1875, George had moved on from a farm in Sutton Crosses, Lincolnshire. His youngest daughter Malvina had married from that address.

Jun 1876, George is residing with his daughter at the Horseshoe Inn in Godmanchester.

[kiterunner]

I've been having a look but no luck yet.

[Phoenix]

Thanks Kite!
Looking at the newspaper articles it sounds as if he was a quarrelsome unsuccessful farmer who probably drank too much. My guess would be prison or the workhouse

[Merry]

I looked for GM in the 1881 census yesterday. Didn't find him. His burial transcription, 10 Jan 1883 aged 70, at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Wisbech states him to be a pauper, but doesn't state where he was buried from (WH?).

[Phoenix]

Ooh, well done, Merry!

If the nation thinks it's going through tough times now (and I reckon it will be worse in a couple of years) things must have been horrendous in the country a hundred and fifty years ago.

All the marriages I have found are by licence, the families have servants, and then America floods us with cheap corn, which must have been great for urban workers, but spelt disaster for the farmers. His son, another George (which makes disentangling them all a challenge), also had to give up his farm, became a farm bailiff, and that branch of the family moved right out of the area, to Berkshire.

Wherever he was, it wasn't in the workhouse in 1881: https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Wisbec....shtml#Inmates

[Merry]

I suppose he could have been sleeping rough?

I used to know the answer to this, but have forgotten! Which sites use the LDS version of the 1881 census? When I was looking in different places (Ancestry, FMP and UK Census Online) and wondered if I was wasting my time if they would all be the same! I keep meaning to look for someone really badly transcribed and then see if they were the same elsewhere, but can't seem to get round to that.

[Phoenix]

Last time I heard, they were still using the same version. We all said at the time that it would be the best transcription, as it was double keyed, and started off using family historians as volunteers. I worked on Southwark, where the enumerator didn't close the loops on "a"s, and rendered names like Dimitrovic as Dimitrovidge. But even family historians get things wrong, and the paper images we were working from (I certainly didn't have a home computer at that date) weren't always of the clearest. Sleeping rough seems quite likely - certainly none of his children had given him house room - perhaps with the cows!

[kiterunner]

Ancestry's 1881 census says "free index" which means it is from the LDS transcription, but of course there will have been corrections made over the years.

If you search the 1881 census on FamilySearch and you want to click through to view an image, it takes you to Findmypast so I should think Findmypast is still using the LDS transcription too.

UK Census Online won't show you the full transcription unless you subscribe, so I think they probably have their own version.