Introductory Remarks
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TO HER MAJESTY'S PRINCIPAL SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE Census Office, London, 20th June, 1871 SIR, BEFORE referring to the results of the Census, it is proposed here to describe briefly the arrangements which have been made under your sanction to ensure as much accuracy as is attainable in enumerating in one day by name every person living these Islands. The Census of Ireland was intrusted to a Royal Commission, the Census of Scotland to the Registrar General of Scotland, through whose friendly co-operation the population of the United Kingdom will be tabulated, as regards essential particulars, on a uniform plan. The Census of England and Wales was taken pursuant to the provisions of the Act 33 & 34 Vict. c. 107., which rendered available the staff of officers who carry out the registration of Births and Deaths in their several districts. The same machinery had been employed in the three previous enumerations, and many of the officers had therefore had experience which they turned to good account. In the towns they knew every court and street, in the country every cottage and hamlet. The Metropolitan, the Municipal, and the County Police afforded help in enumerating the homeless population, The strength of the Navy, in forms prepared for the purpose, will be returned by the Admiralty; the Merchant Seamen, in port or out at seas by Her Majesty's Customs and by the Registrar General of Merchant Seamen; and His Royal Highness the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief will supply full returns of the various required particulars respecting the Army. British subjects in Foreign States, and in India and the population of the Colonies, will be inquired after by Her Majesty's Secretaries c Foreign Affairs, India, and the Colonies. The population in the Islands of the British Seas has been enumerated under the supervision of the respective Governors. This preliminary publication refers to the population at home on the Census day. The population of England evidently could not be enumerated in one day by the 2107 Registrars; and it was ascertained that this could only be successfully accomplished by dividing the kingdom in 1871 into 32,608 districts, to each of which a special Enumerator was appointed. To muster, instruct, supply with materials, and to pay this army of volunteers after their work had been checked, was one of the most difficult parts of the work. Their qualifications were thus defined in the instructions approved by you:— "Every person proposed for appointment as an Enumerator must be intelligent, trustworthy, and active; he must write well, and have some knowledge of arithmetic; he must not be infirm nor such weak health to render him unable to under go the requisite exertion; he should not be younger than 18 years of age nor older than 65; he must be temperate, orderly, and respectable, and be such a person as is likely to conduct himself with strict propriety and civility in the discharge of his duties. He must make himself well acquainted with the district and the local boundaries within which he will be required to act; and it will be a further recommendation if his occupation has been as to add to his fitness for the office. He must himself be prepared to undertake the delivery of the Householders' Schedules in the week commencing 27th March, as well as their collection on the day of the Census, the 3rd of April. Any clergyman or other minister of religion, or any professional who takes a special interest in the people of the place might be invited to act as an Enumerator." The Enumerator in 1861 was paid a fixed fee of 1l.; and at the rate of 2s. for every 100 persons enumerated by him over the first four hundred; in large districts a mileage was allowed. After careful consideration of the tariff and of its effects on the estimates, the Registrar General submitted, with your approval, to the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, that it would be. right, with a view to efficiency of service, to raise the fixed fee from a pound to a guinea, and the rateable payment from 2s. to 2s. 6d. a hundred; that is, 5 and 25 per cent, respectively on the two items; the mileage remaining the same. Under these rates the Enumerators undertook by agreement to discharge their various duties; and for their services in delivering the schedules, collecting, revising them, and copying their contents into books, received 53,919l. 15s. 6d. The whole of the 35,430 local officers1
employed have been paid 78,299l.
No one, talking into account the required qualifications, and the quantity of work to be done, will consider that they were overpaid; or be surprised to learn that a certain number of the Enumerators, perhaps justly, considered that they were under paid. Under a fixed tariff of pay this result is inevitable. The district assigned to each Enumerator varied in size, according as the population was dense or scattered; and this was partly taken into account by giving, in addition to a fixed fee, rated additional payments by numbers and by miles travelled. But it is evident that the Enumerator's labour might be considerably increased in certain streets where the schedules were not filled up; he might incur, not only trouble, but, as some of them pointed out, danger, by going into courts where small-pox and other diseases were epidemic. These elements could not be taken into account in a general tariff; nor could elements of greater importance, namely the very variable demand and supply, or the usual pay of such skilled officers as were required in different parts of the kingdom. What pay would be ample in one town would be insufficient in another. Yet it would have been inexpedient to. leave it open to the Registrars to make a separate bargain with each Enumerator; for if different scales had been applied to London, the great towns, and the country, general instead of partial dissatisfaction would have been the inevitable result. The Enumerators, notwithstanding these small difficulties, have done their country good service; they have all sent in their books in time, and have thus enabled the Registrars to supply the summaries of the facts which are embodied in the present publication; and there is every reason to believe that the books which have yet to be examined will be found, as on previous occasions, creditable to them as a body, and in many instances deserving of the highest praise.2
The Census is taken with comparative ease in a town where all the streets and the courts are named, where all houses are consecutively numbered, and where all the boundaries are distinctly marked. Such business-like arrangements are always made where the municipal government is intelligent and energetic; but the duty is unfortunately neglected in many places, and the residence of ratepayer, voter, or householder is identified with the greatest difficulty. To facilitate the enumeration, a circular was addressed to the Mayors of the several boroughs, and to the Chairmen of all the Local Boards in the kingdom, pointing out the requirements of the law, and soliciting their assistance, and the assistance of their officers, as well in preparing the way for the Census as in completing it. We take this opportunity of thanking the municipal authorities for their zealous co-operation. The clergy and ministers of religion were also helpful; the press afforded very efficient aid in various ways; the people took pains to fill up the schedules carefully, and where any had accidentally been overlooked by an Enumerator, they often applied to the Registrar or to the Census Office. It is, we believe, impossible, with all these advantages, to enumerate every individual in dense towns, so that the population is always somewhat understated; but there is reason to believe that the numbers that escape are few, and, in consequence of the many improved arrangements, mechanical or administrative, suggested by experience, and now brought into action, the Census of the Kingdom has never been more accurately taken. The errors in the revised figures are not likely to be of any magnitude. The 32,606 Enumerators had districts of less than two square miles in area, containing 131 houses, and 696 people on an average; but the size, and the numbers of the people, in these districts varied greatly. A wide moor, with 64 people and a few scattered cottages, was a district populous enough for one man; while in London one Enumerator counted 3,599 souls, another 3,860, and a third 4,800. Enumerators, it must be added, were allowed to appoint authorized assistants in certain cases. NUMBER of ACRES INHABITED HOUSES and POPULATION in ENGLAND and WALES to an AVERAGE REGISTRATION DISTRICT, REGISTRATION SUB-DISTRICT, and ENUMERATION DISTRICT.
The best time for taking the Census many statists have agreed is the first day of each year, and in the abstract they are right. But in England the climate has to be consulted. Some parts of the country are almost inaccessible in the dead of winter, and the work of the Census day would be cut up by short hours. The nomadic part of the population, it is true, is at home in January, but even in early spring few of the vagrants so numerous in summer are in the roads, streets, and fields. The midnight of Palm Sunday was fixed on as the Census hour; and on the 3rd of April, the month when the English folk of old longed to go on pilgrimages, the 32,606 Enumerators began their work, and wended to "every shire's end of England." The day, and this was not unimportant, was cool and fine all over the kingdom. The Enumerators collected 5,030,895 schedules from that number of families or lodgers living in 4,259,032 houses. The enumerated population of England and Wales living at midnight on April 2nd 1871 was 22,704,108 souls. This is an increase of 2,637,884 over the numbers living at the last Census, and exceeds our expectations. For the increase from 1851 to 1861 was 2,138,615, and the rate of increase was 12 per cent, in the ten years that ended in 1861; whereas the rate of increase in the last ten years has been 13 per cent. To the above numbers the Army, Navy, and Merchant Seamen Abroad have to be added when the numbers and proportions appertaining to England and Wales are known. Foreigners, now numerous in England, are a set-off against the numbers of Englishmen of other classes abroad. The population increased rapidly from 1801 to 1811 while the French war was going on, and most rapidly after the peace; the increase from 1811 to 1821 was 18 per cent., and from 1821 to 1861, while emigration grew every year more extensive, the population went on increasing, but at a decreasing rate, so that in the decenniad ending in 1861 the increase became 12 per cent.; the actual addition to the numbers was every ten years (except in 1841-51) greater than in the ten years preceding, but it was never so great before as in the ten years which we have just passed through. The population of England and Wales at home in 1801, when the first Census was taken was 8,892,536; and the mere increase of Englishmen since the year 1831 is very nearly equal to the whole of those existing in the year 1801, when the country was engaged in the great conflict with France, and with the armed sovereigns of the north of Europe. The causes of the more rapid increase in the last ten years of the number of the inhabitants of England and Wales are complex, and can be more satisfactorily discussed after all the facts have been analysed. Here we have only to pass the people rapidly in review as they are distributed over the kingdom, and take a note of the counties which have been left by their children, and the cities to which the emigrants have resorted to fill up the ranks of our industrial armies. 1
Of these local officers there were 627 Superintendent Registrars, 2,197 Registrars, and 32,606 Enumerators (including 627 for public institutions and 66 for boats and barges). 2
Note.—
The following are a few specimens of the curious incidents to which the Census gave rise:— 14 schedules were sent to the Registrar General privately to avoid scrutiny of Enumerators in country districts, his sanction having been previously obtained. A spinster in the country, of rather advanced age, very wealthy, fastened up her doors and windows, forbidding access to the Enumerator, and saying a fine of 20l.
would not induce her to give him the required particulars. In answer to a soothing letter, she sent the Registrar General her schedule privately. A gentleman of landed property declared he would pay a fine of any amount, indeed would rather cease to exist, than commit the offence for which David suffered, as recorded in the Old Testament. His religious scruples were respected, and the particulars of his family were nevertheless recorded with tolerable accuracy. One Enumerator states that he was insulted and assaulted, so much so that he summoned the householder before the Magistrates, who inflicted a fine. No prosecution was instituted by the Registrar General; but a few recusant householders appear to have been proceeded against in the country, and fined at the instance of Enumerators. The following paragraph is from a local paper:— "Objecting to the census.—
A middle-aged man has been fined 1l.
and costs by the Devon county magistrates for refusing to make out a census paper for himself and his child. He declared that he knew neither of his own name nor his place of birth and he would not perjure himself by making a false entry. At St Austell, a gentleman, the possessor of considerable property, has refused to allow the census schedule to be taken into his household. He will be summoned." A lady in a London district, appointed Enumerator, discharged the duties very efficiently. An "Author" in last column states, "wife says" that he is "both idiot and lunatic."
CENSUS OF 1871.
PRELIMINARY REPORT
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY AUSTIN, M.P.,
HOME DEPARTMENT.
—
Acres.
Inhabited Houses.
Population.
ENGLAND AND WALES
37,324,883
4,429,032
22,704,108
To 1 Average District
59,529
6,793
36,211
To 1 Average Sub-District
16,989
1,939
10,334
To 1 Average Enumerator's District
1,145
131
696