From Florence to the family which resided at Elvaston Castle: How Census has given great record of city over the years
With the latest Census Day being held yesterday, Zena Hawley looks at previous surveys to give a picture of just what life in Derby was like
IT was Census Day yesterday, March 21 - the 24th since censuses started in the UK in 1801. They are held every ten years normally but the 1941 census was not taken because of the Second World War and an extra mini-census was taken on April 24, 1966, using just 10% of the population.
As the decades have progressed, the census has altered, asking more and more detailed questions about people’s lives and is nowadays used increasingly to formulate Government policy and planning.
The earliest censuses were mainly head counts but now the census is more likely to ask where people were born, their jobs, number of rooms in their house, qualifications, home ownership, ethnicity, gender and religion.
Since 1911, data from the censuses will not be made public for 100 years and the 1921 census is expected to be published on January 1, 2022.
All the surviving censuses, excluding 1801, the ones from 1841 to 1911, together with the 1939 National Registration Act census, have been published and are a fascinating source of information for family history buffs or people who like to know what famous people were doing on a given day in census years.
A census is a great leveller. Everyone, from all walks of life, has to take part and account for who lives in their homes on the day of the census.
For example, Florence Nightingale had long been moved from Derbyshire and was living in London in the 1881 census.
It shows her living in South Street, near to Hanover Square, where the 60-year-old is described as the “Directress of the Nightingale Fund for Training Hospital Nurses”.
With her are a lady’s maid, two housemaids and a cook. One of the housemaids – Maria Brooks – appears to have been part of Miss Nightingale’s life in Derbyshire, having been born in Holloway, near Matlock.
She was also living at the same address ten years earlier in 1871 with four female servants aged from 22 to 38. Temperance Hatcher was Miss Nightingale’s personal maid, while Sarah Herdsman was the cook.
Closer to home and again using the 1881 census, what were the titled people of Derbyshire doing on Sunday, April 3 when the census was taken that year?
Chatsworth House seems to have been largely deserted, apart from a skeleton staff of nine servants, including housekeeper Sarah Jones, 56, and from Wales.
But ironically, the now deserted Elvaston Castle was alive with the presence of the Earl and Countess of Harrington, Charles and Elizabeth Stanhope and their children, aged from 19 to 37, together with a daughter-in-law. Helping to keep the place shipshape was a formidable army of 27 servants whose roles included: cook, lady’s maid, kitchen maid, housemaid, scullery maid, still-room maid, dairymaid, valet, footman, butler, steward’s room boy, groom and porter.
Radbourne Hall, near Mickleover, was also fairly lively with the unmarried Reginald Chandos Pole, JP, aged 28, at home with his sister, Anna Maria, together with 14 servants, six of whom were grooms of varying kinds.
And widower Lord Alfred Curzon was in residence at Kedleston Hall, together with five daughters, aged 12 to 23. Marie Rommele, of Baden in Germany, kept order in the schoolroom, and 22 servants kept the house running.
Just two servants were living at Chaddesden Hall - Sarah Davison and Elizabeth Wilkins - and the hall’s owners, the Wilmot family, appear to be in London.
But were other people doing on the night of the census in the different years - which has fallen on different dates from March 10 in 1801 through to as late as June 6 in 1841? Looking at the 1881 census, it is possible to check familiar streets in a place such as Derby to see who lived in them on the day of the census 130 years ago.
Take the city’s Hartington Street which, in recent years has been in the news more for its rundown appearance than anything else, despite originally being a tree-lined avenue of fashionable homes built in the 1870s.
On the night of April 3, 1881, homes in the street were inhabited by a mixture of doctors, engineers, veterinary surgeons, dentists and even a retired Royal Navy commander – Henry Stair Sandys.
There was even a girls’ school in the street, run by Fanny Shelton, which had 12 female boarders aged eight to 18, who were attended by two other governesses and three servants.
All the homes had an array of servants and the odd one had visitors staying with families.
At No 1 Hartington Street, medical practitioner William Iliffe, aged 35, was living with his wife Mary, 36, and their two daughters and a son, all aged 10 and under.
Mr Iliffe originated from Nuneaton and his wife from Crewland, in Lincolnshire, but their children had been born in Derbyshire.
Staying with them was the vicar of St Michael’s Church, Thomas Twist, and waiting on them all was a cook, nurse and servant.
No 2 Hartington Street was occupied by Francis Ley – later to become 1st Baronet – who created Ley’s Malleable Castings Vulcan Ironworks and owned the Baseball Ground from 1890 to 1924.
In 1881, it appears he employed
Everyone, from all walks of life, has to take part and account for who lives in their homes on the day of the census.
60 men, 68 boys and 12 girls at his factory and was just 35 years of age.
He lived with his first wife Georgina, and their two children, Ethel and Henry, together with a cook and a housemaid.
Mr Ley, who originated from Winshill, near Burton, had started work at the company of Andrew Handyside in Derby.
Mr Handyside, whose iron foundry products are still found all over the world, include the framework for St Pancras station in London and also the bridge in Derby’s Friar Gate.
In 1881, Mr Handyside was also in Derby, aged 75, and living as a retired civil engineer at the Cedars in Ashbourne Road, with his 58-year-old wife, Anastasia, who was from the Ukraine.
Living with them was Mr Handyside’s great niece, Eleanor
Haverfield, 10, and a cook and housemaid.
On the same census, Derby philosopher Herbert Spencer was living in London and was a boarder at the house of Emma Shickle, along with a variety of retired professionals. His occupation is given as “author of philosophical works”
In the 1911 census, Derby County footballer Steve Bloomer was living with his family at 35 Portland Street, which has six rooms. He is listed as professional footballer, born in Cradley in Worcestershire and aged 37 at the time of the census.
Also listed are his wife, Sarah to whom he had been married for 15 years, and children Hetty, 13, Violet, 10 and Doris, eight. It has been completed and signed by Steve using his full name Stephen.
The 1911 census marked the start
of more detailed censuses and one that was probably filled in the most by householders rather than enumerators coming to the door to complete them, as had been the norm in the early years of censuses.
Another familiar name on the 1911 census is that of Alice Wheeldon, who a few years later would be arrested and appear at the Old Bailey on a charge of trying to poison the then Prime Minister David Lloyd George
In 1911, she was living with her husband William, who is a commercial traveller
selling tobacco, schoolteacher son William and daughters Nellie (shop assistant) and Winnie (school student) at 12 Peartree Road.
Her other daughter, Hettie is not at the sixroomed house. The census was completed and signed by Mr Wheeldon. Another wellknown name - if only because a major Derby road was named after him - is on the 1911 census. William Robert Raynes, hence Raynesway, became Derby’s first Labour
councillor the same year as the 1911 census. He was living at 13 Commerce Street in Crewton with his wife of 18 years, Alice. The couple had no children. He was a house painter by trade and owned his own business employing people.
As one of the longest serving members of the council, he was nominated as the town’s first Labour mayor in 1921 without opposition from the other parties. [5]
He was an MP for Derby from December 6, 1923 to October 29, 1924 and again between 1929 and 1931.
It will be interesting how many of today’s names are remembered in 100 years’ time and how fascinating our descendants will find the census of 2021. Don’t forget to fill it in.