SFHS MsgBrd - (Re: Re: Workhouse aliases)

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Re: Re: Workhouse aliases

Posted by : Brian Jones

When: 21/07/2010 18:34:14

Email: brian.jones@catfish.plus.com (Remove spaces [if any] to use)

Not so simple in this case as these are three young siblings, each listed in the workhouse census return as Smith (alias Barker).  As Smiths they could be my ancestors.  Now I have found three children same first names, dob, surname Barker, in the census 10 years before. I wonder if the Barker children were adopted in the workhouse by the Smiths and then left to live with them, taking their name.  Do you know if workhouse managements arranged for child name changes?
 In response to: 
What is anyone's 'real' name?

People of course do change their names from time to time and I suspect the workhouse population were a strata of society where it happened quite often, in that it might be convenient to be called one name in one place and something else in another and sometimes to say that one was now known as Jones but had been known as Smith. Perhaps to escape the law, pretend one was someone else etc 'John Jones otherwise known as Smith' Your real name is what you are called, not what is down on a piece of paper.
 In response to: 
I've found several census records for a workhouse where the inmates are named as, for example, Bessie Smith (alias Barker).

Does anybody know what this means?  Why two names?  Is Smith or Barker the real name?

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Re: Workhouse aliases

Follow-ups:

Re: Workhouse aliases
(Christine Wibberley - 21/07/2010 18:55:42)
- Re: Re: Workhouse aliases
  (Christine Wibberley - 21/07/2010 18:58:48)
  - Re: Re: Re: Workhouse aliases (Christine Wibberley - 21/07/2010 19:03:21)
    Re: Re: Re: Re: Workhouse aliases (Brian Jones - 21/07/2010 23:20:39)

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