Genealogy Chat

In my continuing quest for the Beard family I found myself looking at the residents of the Plymouth District Workhouse in 1891 and the first name there was 'Freak' (no mistake) as a Christian name. Poor little soul was only 7. Makes you wonder what his future held since pretty much everything, including being a pauper at 7 was against him. Victoria

Are you sure it wasn't an abbreviation for Frederick? fredk

Or a bad way of writing Frank? Or maybe it was a surname used as a first name. nell

He's not alone: You searched for Freak in United Kingdom Search Results Census Records 342 1891 England Census 160 1901 England Census 86 1871 England Census 55 1851 England Census 13 1861 England Census 13 nell

If it's master Ayres, the entry does indeed look like Freak, but it's generally safer to take spellings from the GRO indexes (not that they are perfect, but better than the census, generally!) Having entered Freak into the forname box on Ancestry FreeBMD there are 17 entries for Freak, 16 of which are a middle name, so presumably a surname being used as a first name. That leaves one.....Freak Morton who died in 1850. There are 727 entires for Freak as a surname.................. Course, (even worse really) it might be a nick-name!! Merry

I agree with the first reply above, Fredk is much more likely. Kate.

Okay, look at the image for that 1891 entry again. I agree, in isolation, it looks like 'Freak', but compare the fourth letter with the second letter in the surname 'Addicott' on the fourth line (presumably you would agree there is no such name as Aadicott?) and the fourth letter of the surname Bradley on line 19, and a lot of the other letter 'd's all over the page. It looks as though the enumerator would take care with the letter d if it was the last letter in a name, but otherwise was pretty careless. For example, compare the two 'd's in the name Edmund on line 13. Also, there is a clear fullstop after the name Fredk to show that it is an abbreviation. Kate.

This might be him (though he should then be 8!) Births Dec 1882 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ayres Frederick Ernest Stoke D. 5b 350 Merry

I agree it's an abbreviation of Frederick, we found my husband's great uncle Frederick on the 1901 census written this way. Just why did they have to abbreviate back then Thos. Chas. etc - makes our job finding them that a lot harder!

Just got back in - loved the message than came up about the site being unavailable and keeping ones fingers crossed! - and am so happy to stand corrected! Frederick is a MUCH better alternative. Victoria

Rachel - as to why they had to abbreviate them, just think how much their fingers must have hurt after writing so much! Kate.