Remembering the date/day

Jellybaby1

I often forget what the date is, and sometimes I forget what day it is, and I check the calendar. If I'm not in a room with a calendar, I will check the newspaper, or my phone, or press the remote control on the TV. My mother-in-law, a farmer's wife, back in the 1970's, always surprised me by having five or six calendars hanging on the kitchen wall. In the mid or early-19th century if someone couldn't remember what date or day it was, would they have had a calendar hanging on the kitchen wall, or would it have been a wild guess and maybe miles off the correct date?

Hermy

Just thinking about it now I can picture someone going down the road to ask a more knowledgeable neighbour or the priest if it was important that they know the date.

lottpaul

From checking records and talking to older family members I've found that the dates - in terms of months etc - were usually close enough and were associated with a church holy day, a fair day, a rent day etc. Life then was full of such dates - they served as markers for farming and other life. They might have been a day or 2 out but that was all.
More common was that they were several years out - something happened on e.g. St Gobnaits day - but in which year was sometimes a problem. Not helped by people becoming older to qualify for pensions, women becoming younger to conceal the fact that they were several years older than their husbands and might not have as many child bearing years as others supposed etc.

pinkypinky

If you look at the census fragments, you see that they asked on a few censuses for people to list family members who had died since the previous census but the way it was asked was year & season. I presume that the enumerators felt people wouldn't remember an exact date but would remember whether it was winter, or time to bring in a harvest, etc.

L1011

The importance of Sundays (church attedance, possibly not meant to do any work on the farm or whatever depending on religious sect) meant that I'd say most of them would know - roughly - what day of the week it was, and definitely if it was Saturday, Sunday or Monday

KildareFan

also they would know about dates of fairs, patterns, Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter, Hallow'een... not sure if they'd know about Patrick's or Arthur's day.

Jellybaby1

I came across a reference to some event, like a death, which happened in the 'year of the big snow', or the 'year of the flood'. I wonder when people actually began having calendars in their homes though.

P. Breathnach

Jellybaby1 wrote: »

I came across a reference to some event, like a death, which happened in the 'year of the big snow', or the 'year of the flood'. I wonder when people actually began having calendars in their homes though.

Not before they became literate, anyway.

If you trawl through the 1901 census, you will find a lot of adults who were classed as unable to read or write, and I suspect that the degree of literacy claimed for some others was an optimistic rating.

pedroeibar1

Jellybaby1 wrote: »

I wonder when people actually began having calendars in their homes though.

I agree with P. Breathnach that the accuracy of the literacy claims of Read and Write/ Read Only, Irish / English, etc., is open to debate but I'd argue that there was a sort of "functional" literacy as a result of National Schooling (from the 1830's) - people could read numbers & and "do sums" so a calendar should not have been a big problem. Most of the Mills, seed merchants, general grocers, merchants, etc., were distributing them as advertising by 1900. Most homes had a almanac, showing Fair days, race meetings, etc., even if it only was Old Moore's....

I think the real issue is that people did not bother to remember dates as birthdays were not important to them - I today found a baptism on the NLI site for 1844, whereas the person had given 1845,1847,1849 as her DoB in various US census returns.

Thomas from Presence

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I agree with P. Breathnach that the accuracy of the literacy claims of Read and Write/ Read Only, Irish / English, etc., is open to debate but I'd argue that there was a sort of "functional" literacy as a result of National Schooling (from the 1830's) - people could read numbers & and "do sums" so a calendar should not have been a big problem. Most of the Mills, seed merchants, general grocers, merchants, etc., were distributing them as advertising by 1900. Most homes had a almanac, showing Fair days, race meetings, etc., even if it only was Old Moore's....

I think the real issue is that people did not bother to remember dates as birthdays were not important to them - I today found a baptism on the NLI site for 1844, whereas the person had given 1845,1847,1849 as her DoB in various US census returns.

It's crazy. People really hadn't a clue how old they were. Well, until the pension came in that is!

Jellybaby1

Money always clarified things!