Hi All In my researches into life in Norfolk in the 1860's, the majority of the general population of this beautiful County could not read and write to a standard sufficient to enable them to fill in the census forms. Nearly all of the adults filling in the forms for the 1861 census would have been born before 1840, with many of them having been born during the late Georgian period. The education of the poorer classes in rural England was just about non-existant before the 1850's, apart from the odd Dame School and anything picked up in the Workhouse. Glynn http://www.norfolk-tours.co.uk