Reliability of Date of Birth for fallen soldiers

[mnewlands]

My great, great Uncle and my great grandad - Alexander Barron and Donald Barron I believe may have died during the Great War. However as I do not know why regiment either of them served in I can only go by their ages, my great gradads is "unknown" and my great uncles is age 34. However, I calculate my great great uncle would be 36 not 34. How reliable are the ages as recorded?

[CT-Guards]

Welcome Bonniebee,

Post on here as much information as you have. Where did they come from, where they were born. Do you know their parents names or addresses

Something will come up, it always does on here.

[sw63]

How reliable are the ages as recorded?

Only as reliable as the information given by the soldier (or his family).

My great grandfather's attestation record has him being born in 1870 when I know for a fact that he was born in 1865 (from his Birth Certificate).

I think he believed he was right because both the 1901 & 1911 Censuses give his birth date at or around 1870 (the 1871 & 1881 Censuses give his birth date closer to 1865 - but the info for these would have been provided by his father).

Simon

[Rockdoc]

Stated ages always need to be correlated. One of my Great-grandmothers only gave her correct age once in a census and that led me quite a dance trying to find her parents' marriage and her birth, which was four years earlier than the stated ages would have suggested. While most ages will be correct, if the context is one where the age was unlikely to have been cross-checked at the time it's best to assume it's wrong until shown otherwise, IMO.

Keith

[corisande]

, I calculate my great great uncle would be 36 not 34.

Another of the problems is transcription, sometimes the original document is virtually impossible to transcribe, and the transcriber just makes a guess!

[mnewlands]

Welcome Bonniebee,

Post on here as much information as you have. Where did they come from, where they were born. Do you know their parents names or addresses

Something will come up, it always does on here.

Hello My Great Great Uncle was born in 1881 according to census records, he joined the Scots Guards in 1894 aged 14 years and 5 months according to his Attestation Records he was born in the Tower of London. His father was Alexander Barron born in Scotland 1853, his mother Annie Moore born in Wicklow, Ireland, 1852. My great grandad was his younger brother born 1882 in Chelsea Barracks I have recently sent for his records from the Scots Guards. It would seem that Alexander died on 15/09/1917 if that is him and Donald my great grandfather on 03/05/1917. I have tried to establish from the 1911 Census where my great, great grandad would have been living but neither he nor my great great grandmother appear on this Census

[mnewlands]

Another of the problems is transcription, sometimes the original document is virtually impossible to transcribe, and the transcriber just makes a guess!

Apologies to you all I really need to hone my research skills! I have gone back into the CWGC website and when I clicked on the names it gave information such as parents names' and address etc and neither of these are correct. Back to the drawing board, My great great Uncle survived three years service during the Boer War so I would be very amazed if he also survived four years of the Great War considering the number of fatalities. By WWII he would have been 58 years old and my great grandad would have been 57/56 years old possibly to old for service?