link for Old Age Pension claims (after 1908) for County Tyrone?

Peggy,

You can use this link to find some:

http://censussearchforms.nationalarchives.ie/search/cs/home.jsp

There are more in Josephine Masterson’s book – Ireland 1841/1851 Census Abstracts (Northern Ireland). Which is not on-line. I have a copy though if anyone wants a look up.

Not all pension applicants needed a census check. Many could prove their age by documents like baptismal certificates, military discharge papers (which recorded an age) and some marriage certificates, where the date of the marriage would show your approximate age. The census check was the fallback option for those without such proof.

Elwyn.

Thank you for your reply. I"m having two difficulties with the link you sent.

The left hand side of the text is cut off so I can't read the instructions. I've tried re-searching for that site but they all are the same. Do you have another link, please?

The search feature appears to be for ONLY the 1841/51 Census and it's not giving me results for my Gr.Grandparents but I know where they were, down to the Townland. 

I understood there were only partial remains of that particular census, is that not correct?

Suggestions on how to find them, please? 

I was hoping there would be a specific list of people who were granted pensions, those people who had already proved their age.

Do you know if there is such a thing?

Perhaps you could do a look up in your book, please? Let me know what info you need.

Does the book cover England as well? 

Thank you, Peggy. Canada

Peggy, 

That’s the only link I have I am afraid. Try it in a different browser, or go to the national archives site and search for census records there. 

The reason the search feature only offers the 1841 & 1851 censuses is that they were the only censuses used for pension purposes. 

You are correct that only partial remains exist of the 1841 and 1851 Irish censuses. They were mostly destroyed in the 1922 fire. Some bits and pieces remain from a variety of sources. There’s some bits of the 1851 census for Co Antrim which were presumably stored outside the PRO or perhaps simply survived the fire. I don't really know. The 1831 census of Co Derry was outside the building in 1922 because someone was working on it. So it survived. And then we have the pension extracts. 

England and Wales introduced birth certificates in 1837 but in Ireland we didn’t start till 1864. When the state pension was introduced across Britain & Ireland in 1909, you had to be 70 or older and you had to prove your age. That was pretty straightforward in England because most people would have had a birth certificate but in Ireland no-one would have had one. So other methods were used to verify age. One was to ask the pension applicant to say where they were in 1851 (and sometimes 1841 depending on their claimed age) and to check in those two censuses to see if they could be found, and if so, what age they were then. Usually the clerks in the PRO would extract nearly all the information on the census, not just the applicant’s details. Though the main 1841 & 1851 censuses were burned, those pension extracts were stored somewhere else and survived. But they represent just a tiny fraction of those censuses. The censuses for 1861 and 1891 are almost all totally destroyed but were not used for checking ages in the pension applications. 

There is no specific list of people granted pensions. If the records still exist they are not in the public domain. 

Give me the surname, county and townland and I will look up Masterson’s book. 

The book only covers Ireland. (2 volumes North & South). The books include persons born in Ireland who were living in England or Scotland at the time they applied for their pension but it does not include persons born in England as they would mostly have had birth certificates so the census check system wasn’t needed there.