Robert Holmes wrote: > > very interesting replies. Clearly the opportunities for identity theft > were already being used. Presumably, you could acquire somebody else's > birth cert or bribe a person to prove who you were. My grandfather's > army records show that he was born any year between 1873 and 1882. He > appears in only one census 1911. The ages which appear in the census, > his marriage certificate, his army records ( more than one )and death > certificate all vary. An example: in the 1911 census he is five years > younger than when he married! Hallo I think you are applying modern concepts to the past. It will give you a distorted view of the past. A professional genealogist and lecturer on the subject has often said "the past is different world". That is true. Today we are regularly asked for our date of birth. Not so in the past. It surprises me how often our ancestors did know how old they were. I doubt most of our ancestors even knew they could apply for a copy of their own certificate, let alone anyone else's. They would have been unlikely to have been able to afford one. There was an element who did masquerade as someone else then just as they do now, but I would suggest identity theft as we know it, and presumably as you mean, was unheard of then. I think it is fair to say that the majority of researchers have at least one person in the family tree who have managed not to be in one or more censuses. There could be many reasons for that. I think it is also fair to say the majority of researchers have examples of ages being inconsistent from one census to the next. A great great uncle claimed at his marriage he was much older than he really was because his wife was considerably older than him. Her daughter was closer to his age than she was. The daughter later ran off with the great great uncle's married cousin and the pair fled to America together. Men lied about their age just as much as women did. Ages on death certificates are dependent on how well the informant knew the deceased as well as how distressed they were. They are known to be the least reliable of certificates. Any information given is only as good as the informant or as the informant wished it to be. Connie in London