This bloody Census would age you, man!

As I ponder all the tick boxes once again, my mind goes back to my bachelor Great-Uncle James and my spinster Great-Aunts Catherine and Margaret (OK Jemmy, Katie, Maggie) and how they aged so lamentably over the first decade of the 20th century. Life was rough then under the Brits.

Sunday 31st March 1901: : : :Sunday 2nd April 1911

James F.n 47 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Catherine 45  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Margaret .35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50

Indeed, not only did Katie overtake Jemmy in age but, whereas he was Head of Household in 1901, she had replaced him by 1911. Some hookery there?

Like thousands of others, my honest relatives were just lining themselves up for a slightly earlier pension, following Lloyd George's Pensions Act of 1908. With no birth certificates, there may have been grounds for understating their ages in 1901, but even better grounds for overstating them in 1911. I guess Jemmy and Katie managed to collect their 5/-0d a week before the Brits pulled out ten years later - but then unexpectedly they found themselves on the 'British' side of the Border anyway after 1922, so I'm sure their pensions were safe. [Funny that Lloyd George's Act stipulated a good character test before you could be eligible for your 5 bob a week. Would LG have passed it himself?] 

Now I wonder if Osborne & Alexander could come up with a really good reason for me to jack up my age to 75, say, before midnight tonight.