The 1861 Census
Jad Adams summarises the findings of the 1861 census, and explains why you’re in luck if your relations were immigrants or lived in Scotland The new question showed a continuing preoccupation in Scotland with education
Background and tips for this mid-century census
For the first time this year the census in Scotland was conducted from Edinburgh under the direction of a Scottish registrar general.
The man in charge, 60-yearold William Pitt Dundas, had been in post since the Registration Act which came into effect on 1 January 1855 to allow for the registration of births, deaths and marriages in Scotland. Previously the Scottish census had been administered from London.
There were two new census questions in Scotland. The first asked the number of children aged between five and 15 who were attending school or being educated at home, showing a continuing preoccupation in Scotland with education.
The second question to be answered in the Scottish census alone was about the number of rooms that had one or more windows. This reflected concerns about housing and sanitary conditions
– it was not related to the window tax, which Scotland did not have in the 19th century. The records show homes for ploughmen and their families, farm servants and weavers as having only one
room with a window. Farmers would have five or more, and in large houses the number of rooms with windows would reach double figures.
Five per cent of the Scottish population lived on 186 inhabited islands. Since there was so much water, it should come as no surprise that drowning was a frequent cause of death. “Dangerous channels”, the report warned, “through which fierce currents run” take a high toll on male life and “render the proportion of the sexes more disproportioned than they would otherwise be”.
Vagrancy
The registrar was not bashful about giving instruction to other officials on how to do their jobs. He noted, “Numbers of the vagrant class have greatly declined. A little greater vigilance on the part of the County Police would very shortly cause this little respected class of the community to become extinct.” There were 2,024 homeless people in Scotland, with slightly more males than females.
South of the border, itinerants and those sleeping in barns, sheds, tents and the open air were enumerated at the end of the schedule under a list of “persons not in houses”. There were 11,444 of this ‘houseless class’ in England and Wales.
Many houses in urban areas. The first number on
return, however, was just the schedule number. The second column indicated the road, street and house number, or just the parish if the streets were not yet named. The third column was “Houses” with a division so it could be marked “I” when the house was inhabited, “U” for uninhabited and “B” if it was being built.
What exactly constituted a “house” was not clear in many cases. As census historian Edward Higgs says, “Buildings frequently clustered behind and in part on top of others, two front doors might serve the same block, and one flat sometimes went over the top or through into part of a neighbouring building.”
'HÀQLQJ $ 'ZHOOLQJ
It was obvious in the countryside or a middle-class suburb what a cottage or a house was, but in the overcrowded parts of towns each building was supposed to be considered a separate entity for census purposes. Enumerators, however, relying on their own common sense, often counted each flat with its own front door as a separate dwelling. If they followed instructions, the last entry in a household for a person in the schedule was followed by two oblique strokes.
Sometimes the census enabled a Victorian form of benefit fraud. Men approaching 60 could claim that they were that age as, if able-bodied, they could then claim outdoor relief on the Poor Law. Similarly, people would note that they had been born in
the parish in which they currently lived in order to claim under the Poor Law, where ‘settlement’ was necessary under the rules.
For the first time in 1861 a large number of schedules for vessels were distributed, as an attempt was made to enumerate people living on boats and others working at sea on the night of the census. Also in 1861 for the first time men serving on ships of the Royal Navy were enumerated with their name, age, birthplace, marital status and rank (‘quality’ in the terms of the period). Members of the British Army in barracks in the UK were enumerated in separate books, marked “B”. Members of the Army stationed abroad were never fully enumerated. Military authorities provided figures for the number of officers, other ranks, wives and children without giving their names, ages or any other information.
Location information was more complete in this census than previously but variations in the spelling of place names is common, particularly in Cornwall and Wales. Long Welsh place names could be a problem if they were abbreviated. “Llanfair” alone could be any one of more than 10 places if the full name such as Llanfair-Nant-Gwyn or Llanfair Talhaiarn was not given. Geography was not the strong point of some enumerators who could, for example, place Birmingham in a number of different Midland counties.
For someone who was born