Creative Writing | Guide to Wine | Genealogy

Using Court Records

One of the most important - and easily accessible - primary resources for local and family historians is the census. Learning how to interpret it properly will pay handsome dividends.

The census records offer a snapshot in time of a particular dwelling on a given night, providing details of a specific family, including servants, lodgers, and visitors.

In the 1881 census of Elland, Yorkshire, Mary Thornton - who is shown as unmarried, aged 52 and born in Elland - is described as the concubine of the head of the household, William Jackson! Census records can be used not only to further your search for ancestors, but also to broaden your knowledge of the wider family or your community, supplementing information found in other sources. Geographic mobility can be easily tracked through the given birthplaces, and social mobility through addresses and occupations.

THE ORIGINS

To help you achieve your goals it is extremely important to remember why these records were generated - which was not for any of us to research our family or local history. Prior to the eighteenth century, Bishops were responsible for counting the number of families in their diocese, but England was reluctant to adopt a regular official census. By 1798, however, the mood was changing: Thomas Malthus published an essay suggesting that population growth would soon be outstripping supplies of food and other resources, 'Causing Britain to be hit by disease, famine and other disasters'. Frightened by this alarmist view of the future, in a time of bad harvests and food shortages, and driven by the need to know how many men were available to fight the French, Parliament passed 'An Act for taking an Account of the Population' in 1800. The first official census in Britain was taken in 1801. Information was collected from every household by the Overseers of the Poor. This first official headcount revealed the population of Britain (which at that time consisted of the whole of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales) to be 9 million. By the time of the 1901 census, the population of Britain was estimated to be 37 million.

THE PROCESS

Census enumerators were assigned a specific area and distributed a schedule to every household in that area before the census night. They collected them the day following the census, checked the details and copied them into an enumerator's book. The book and the schedules were then returned to the local registrar who in turn checked them and sent them to the Census Office in London. The information that we see today derives from the enumerators' transcript books, not the original schedules, which were destroyed. Technology did not reach the census until 1911, when punch cards and mechanical sorting were introduced, followed in 1961 by computers.

Since 1801 there has been a census every ten years, except for 1941, during the Second World War. Although the basic methods and principles remain unchanged, new questions have been added as others have been removed. The 1841 census is regarded as the first modern census, when the first Registrar General was made responsible for organising the count. This is the earliest census that has survived in its entirety.

To preserve all individuals' confidentiality, there is a 100-year closure on each census before the general public are allowed access. Thus the official release of the 1911 census won't take place until January 2012.

FACTS GIVEN

The information given in each census will vary slightly but, generally speaking, from 1851 each should contain the following: house address and whether or not the house was inhabited; name of each person that had spent the night in that household and their relationship to the head of the household; each person's marital status; age at last birthday; occupation and place of birth; whether they were an employer or employee or neither; and whether they had any handicap, such as being deaf, dumb, blind, or lunatic.


Custom Search