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Census spoofs There is evidence of occasional spoof entries in census returns. They were in all probability created by bored transcribers, the best-documented of which is the splendid cast of characters inhabiting a Chelsea lodging house in 1881.
It included Charles Bigtop – tiger slayer; Gustave Stinkpoor – turpentine boiler; Tanta Toppie – boy hairdresser; Henry Dandelion – horsehair plaiter; William Pitt – clown; 90-year old Jimy [sic] Hillad – peacock carrier; Cornelius Duskall – oat sorter, aged 91; and Joseph Brown – urinal attendant. Not far away, at the fictitious Paddington address of ‘16 Acacia Gardens’, we find a 52-year-old ‘international playboy’, his 97-year-old wife and son (occupation – ‘ponce’) and a cosmopolitan army of servants, among them a Timbuktu-born butler, Persian governess, Russian gardener and a footman from Afghanistan.
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