1851 United Kingdom census

Census of the population of the United Kingdom March 2026 March 2026 Census 1851 1841 1841 United Kingdom census 30 March 1851 1861 1861 United Kingdom census United Kingdom The United Kingdom Census of 1851 recorded the people residing in every household on the night of Sunday 30 March 1851,http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/census-records/#6-when-were-the-censuses-taken Census records 7 March 2018 The National Archives and was the second of the UK censuses to include details of household members. However, this census added considerably to the fields recorded in the earlier 1841 UK Census, providing additional details of ages, relationships and origins, making the 1851 census a rich source of information for both demographers and genealogists. The 1851 census for England and Wales was opened to public inspection at the Public Record Office in 1912 (the 100-year closure rule was not in effect at the time), and is now available from The National Archives as part of class HO 107. The 1851 census for Scotland is available at the General Register Office for Scotland. An 1851 census was taken in Ireland but most of the records have been destroyed; those that remain are held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (for those counties of Ireland which remain in the UK) or the National Archives of Ireland (for those counties now in the Republic of Ireland). The total population of England, Wales and Scotland was recorded as 21,121,967.Cheshire Edward The Results of the Census of Great Britain in 1851, with a Description of the Machinery and Processes Employed to Obtain the Returns; also an Appendix of Tables of Reference Journal of the Statistical Society of London March 1854 17 1 45–72 10.2307/2338356 2338356 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2338356.pdf 14 July 2022 The census was held concurrently with a census of religion in England and Wales, which recorded religious institutions and attendance at religious services on 30 March. The returns for this are also held at The National Archives as class HO 129. Developments from previous censuses The 1851 census was the first to record the full details of birth location for individuals.Dale Angela The research value of the census of population: experiences from the UK https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/cmist/archive-publications/occasional-papers/17-research-value-of-the-census.pdf Where 1841 had only recorded if an individual was born in a county, the 1851 census states the county and parish or town of birth as well. The purpose behind asking for this information was to answer one of the critical questions of the time which was the rate and intensity of migration from rural to urban areas. The results confirmed there had been a significant shift from the countryside to the towns.Christian, P. & Annal, D., 'Census The Expert Guide', The National Archives, 1st Edition (2008), pp 19. 978-1-905615-34-6 The 1851 census was the first to record each person's marital status and relationship to the head of the household, as well as details of disability being recorded—with a field for recording the information that an individual was "blind, deaf or imbecile". Each individual's exact age was also recorded (to the nearest year) rather than rounding adult ages down to the nearest five years. In 1851, much greater detail was asked about people's occupations than in previous censuses. This enabled government analysis of occupations into "classes" and "sub-classes". Masters in trade and manufacture were asked to state the word "master" after the description of their occupation and to state the number of men employed on the day of the census. A full transcript of the 1851 Census can be found online.The 1851 England & Wales Census https://familysearch.org/search/collection/2563939 familysearch.com 19 November 2016 Full documentation for the 1851 population census, including census forms and enumerator instructions, is available from the North Atlantic Population Project. Census of religion The Government also conducted a census in England and Wales of churches and chapels, endowments, sittings, attendance at religious services on Sunday 30 March 1851 and average numbers during the preceding twelve months. Reports were collected from local ministers. The attendance count was 10,896,066 (60.8%) out of a population of 17,927,609. There were 5,292,551 (48.6% of total attendants) attending Church of England services, 4,536,264 (41.6%) attending other Protestant churches, and 383,630 (3.5%) attending Catholic services.Owen Chadwick Owen Chadwick The Victorian Church, Part One: 1829–1859 London Black 1966 363–69 Mann 1854. This was a unique experiment, not repeated at any later census. The religious census returns are now held in The National Archives as class HO 129.Home Office: Ecclesiastical Census Returns http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8993 Discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ TNA 18 January 2019 Government analysis Since the 1841 Census the population of Ireland had dropped by 1.7 million due to mass starvation caused by the Great Famine, as well as emigration abroad. The additional information on ages and occupations permitted considerable contemporary analysis of the census data for England and Wales. Not only were 332 different occupations analysed by age group, but they were also correlated with death records from civil registration, allowing statisticians, led by William Farr, "to compare the living in each well defined occupation with the number dying registered at the corresponding ages; and thus to determine the influence of employment on health and life". Examples from his conclusions include: Miners die in undue proportions, particularly at the advanced ages, when their strength begins to decline... Tailors die in considerable numbers at the younger ages (25–45)... Labourers' mortality is as nearly the same rate as that of the whole population, except in the very advanced ages, when the Poor Law apparently affords inadequate relief to the worn-out workman.Nissell 1987, pp. 62–63. Genealogical value The 1851 census is seen as one of the key sources for British genealogical research of the nineteenth century. The information about the relationship of individuals to the head of household enables relationships between people to be established accurately. Furthermore, the inclusion of exact ages and details of each person's place of birth, provides the researcher with a pointer to the location of birth or baptism records. In many cases, this allows the researcher to pin-down the parish of birth with relative ease: in other cases, the situation is not so simple. An example of the problems encountered is that the census may accurately record a person's place of birth, although their baptism (which may be the only record relating to their birth) may be in a different place. Conversely, a person may have been born and baptised in one place, but brought up in a different place, which is the one they remember as their place of origin and duly record it as such in the census. A further problem is that the information about a household was normally provided to the census enumerator by the head of household—and heads of household varied in the conscientiousness with which they elicited information from each person in the household. In cases where a person was born outside the country, only the country of origin is given (not the location within the country). Hence, for example, there are many people in the English census whose place of birth is given simply as "Scotland". Data availability and publication The 1851 schedules have been digitized and are available at subscription websites. The schedules are of high importance to genealogists since 1851 was the first year in which a place of birth or parish was recorded. Microdata from the 1851 population census are freely available through the North Atlantic Population Project. Religious census The religious census returns (The National Archives, HO 129) are available to download free of charge as part of the Digital Microfilm project. The returns for a number of counties have been published by county record societies and similar bodies. Tiller Kate Kate Tiller Berkshire Religious Census 1851 Reading Berkshire Record Society 2010 978-0954871642 Berkshire Record Society 14 Thompson David Michael Religious Life in mid-19th Century Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire: the returns of the 1851 census of religious worship Cambridge Cambridge Records Society 2014 9780904323238 Cambridgeshire Records Society 21 Munden Alan Frederick The Religious Census of Cumbria, 1851: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness Woodbridge Surtees Society 2019 9780854440719 Surtees Society 223 Tranter Margery Barton David A. Pauls Eli The Derbyshire Returns to the 1851 Religious Census Chesterfield Derbyshire Record Society 1995 Derbyshire Record Society 23 Munden Alan Frederick Religious Census of Bristol and Gloucestershire, 1851 Cheltenham Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 2015 9780900197888 Gloucestershire Record Series 29 Watts Michael J. Religion in Victorian Nottinghamshire: the religious census of 1851 Nottingham University of Nottingham, Department of Adult Education 1988 1850410208 Centre for Local History Record Series 7 (2 vols.) Ede Janet Virgoe Norma Religious Worship in Norfolk: the 1851 census of accommodation and attendance at worship Norwich Norfolk Record Society 1998 0-9511600-8-7 Norfolk Record Society 62 Ward Graham S. The 1851 Religious Census of Northamptonshire Northampton Northamptonshire Record Society 2007 978-0901275653 Northamptonshire Record Society 43 Munden Alan Frederick The Religious Census of 1851: Northumberland and County Durham Woodbridge Surtees Society 2012 9780854440719 Surtees Society 216 Watts Michael R. Religion in Victorian Nottinghamshire: the religious census of 1851 Nottingham University of Nottingham Centre for Local History Record Series 7 1850410208 1988 Tiller Kate Kate Tiller Church and Chapel in Oxfordshire, 1851: the return of the census of religious worship Oxford Oxfordshire Record Society 1987 0902509195 Oxfordshire Record Society 55 Tomalin Peter The returns to the 1851 religious census by the Rutland parishes in the Stamford registration district Rutland Record 24 2004 169–74 Field Clive D. Church and Chapel in Early Victorian Shropshire: returns from the 1851 Census of Religious Worship Keele Centre for Local History, University of Keele 2004 0953602060 Shropshire Record Series 8 Totty Richard The 1851 Religious Census for Staffordshire Stafford Staffordshire Record Society 2024 Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 4th ser. 28 9780901719195 Robinson David The 1851 Religious Census: Surrey Guildford Surrey Record Society 1997 Surrey Record Society 35 Vickers John Ashley The Religious Census of Sussex 1851 Lewes Sussex Record Society 1989 085445036X Sussex Record Society 75 Geary Keith The 1851 Census of Religious Worship: church, chapel and meeting place in mid nineteenth-century Warwickshire Stratford-upon-Avon Dugdale Society 2014 9780852200971 Dugdale Society 47 Wolffe John Yorkshire Returns of the 1851 Census of Religious Worship York Borthwick Institute of Historical Research 2000–2005 0903857952 Borthwick Texts & Calendars 25, 31, 32 1904497101. 190449711X. (3 vols.) See also Census in the United Kingdom List of United Kingdom censuses Notes References Charles Anthony Coke Population Gazetteer of England and Wales and the Islands in the British Seas Harrison London 1864 7189112M Mark D. Herber Mark D. Herber Ancestral Trails Stroud Sutton Publishing 1997 0-7509-1418-1 Horace Mann Census of Great Britain, 1851: Religious Worship in England and Wales: abridged from the official report London George Routledge https://archive.org/details/censusofgreatbri00grea 1854 Muriel Nissel Muriel Nissel People Count: a history of the General Register Office London HMSO 1987 0-11-691183-2 Further reading Coleman, B. I. The Church of England in the Mid-­‐Nineteenth Century: a Social Geography (London, 1980) Coleman, B. I. "Southern England in the Census of Religious Worship, 1851" Southern History, 5 (1983) pp.154–188 Doxey, Cynthia. "The church in Britain and the 1851 religious census." Mormon Historical Studies 4.1 (2003): 107–138. online Ell, P. S. and Slater, T. R. "The Religious Census of 1851: a computer­‐mapped survey of the Church of England" Journal of Historical Geography 20:1 (1994) pp.44–61 Geary, F. Keith. " Characteristics of religious diversity in mid-nineteenth century Warwickshire: a study of the 1851 religious census" (PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 2016) online. Inglis, K. S. "Patterns of Religious Worship in 1851" Journal of Ecclesiastical History 11 (1960) pp. 74–86 Martin, J. M. "Village Traders and the Emergence of a Proletariat in South Warwickshire, 1750–1851", Agricultural History Review 32 (1984) pp.179–188 Pickering, William S. F. "The 1851 Religious Census--A Useless Experiment?" The British Journal of Sociology 18 (1967): 382–407. online Thompson, David M. "The 1851 religious census: problems and possibilities" Victorian Studies 11.1 (1967): 87–97. online Wolffe, J. "The 1851 Census and Religious Change in Nineteenth-Century Yorkshire" Northern History 45:1 March 2008, pp. 71–86 Wolffe, J. "Elite and Popular Religion in the Religious Census of 30 March 1851" Studies in Church History Vol. 42 (2006) pp. 360–371 1841 UK census 1851 1861 1851 Census Category:March 1851 Category:1851 censuses