Following the correspondence about census transcriptions, may I point out a further problem with the enumerators' returns? The enumerator may have had to struggle not only with unfamiliar place names, but with the poor handwriting of semi-literate residents. I had great difficulty finding the birth of my great-grandmother Mary Ann Dorrington (nee Cooper) and needed lateral thinking besides the comparison of two censuses to solve the mystery. Living in Brighton, she was described in 1891 as born in Barnett, Kent, which doesn't exist; in 1881 in Whelslne, Middlesex, which turned out to be Whetstone, in Barnet registration district, which was divided between Middlesex and Hertfordshire (I suppose Hert and Kent could be confused). In 1901 her birthplace was given, in the enumerator's clear scropt, as Maidstone, Kent! I fully sympathise with the laments of enumerators. Elizabeth Silverthorne London