The CEBs Indepth
Contents
These notes are intended as a brief introduction to the Census Enumerators' Books (CEBs) and of their values to teachers and others with an interest in studying nineteenth-century censuses. The notes are illustrated with various examples drawn from the writer's researches into nineteenth-century Warrington and Hanley.
Beginning in 1801, and excepting 1941, a census has been held in Britain every ten years. The first four censuses were little more than simple head counts of the population. In 1841 the first modern census was held. Each householder was required to complete a census schedule giving the address of the household, the names, ages, sexes, occupations and places of birth of each individual residing in his or her accommodation. In 1851 householders were asked to give more precise details of the places of birth of each resident, to state their relationships to him or her, marital statuses and the nature of any disabilities from which they may have suffered. Apart from a few minor changes the basic structure of the census schedule did not change until 1891. Householders were then asked how many rooms (if less then five) their family occupied. Additional occupational data was collected and, in Wales, people were asked to say if they spoke the Welsh language.
After being collected by enumerators the census schedules were copied into census enumerators' books (CEBs). The CEBs were then sent to London where census clerks used them to compute various local and national statistics. Although the original census schedules have long been since destroyed the CEBs were kept. After being locked away for 100 hundred years the CEBs are made public and we consider in this paper their usefulness in studying nineteenth-century society.
Figures 1: An Example of A Household in Tunstall 1841
Figures 2: An Example of A Household in Warrington 1881
Students (aged 12-18) might undertake a variety of projects using the CEBs. They might, for example, transcribe the CEBs for a complete village of 100 or so households, or for a group of streets in an urban area. The CEBs might be analysed using a spreadsheet package such as EXCEL, a database package such as PARADOX or more sophisticated packages such as SPSS (the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences).
Projects that students might undertake include: -
An analyse of
the occupational structure of an area.
Moreover, such studies can be directly related to Key Stage 3 and GCSEs in several subjects including: -
Information Technology.
Students might also be encouraged to search for their own ancestors (great-great grandparents) and to compile their family trees.
In this section we look at the problemsand pitfalls facing the teacher using the CEBs for classroom based projects.
1) Illiteracy. Unfortunately the Victorian censuses were undertaken at a time when up to half the adult population were illiterate or semi-illiterate. Many householders would, therefore, have found it difficult to read and interpret the instructions, and this would have led them to give inaccurate and incomplete information. moreover, it seems likely that, because of poor spelling and poor presentation, enumerators would have found it difficult to read some of their census schedules. This, in turn, would have led to transcription errors.
2) Reading the CEBs. The first problem relates to reading the census enumerator's books. The 1841 CEBs were completed in pencil and cheap ink was often used to complete the CEBs in later censuses. Consequently the CEBs can be difficult to read, the more so where, as often happens, the researcher is using microfilm copies or photocopies of the original books.
3) Addresses. Identifying individual addresses is often a problem. In towns few houses were numbered until the end of the nineteenth century, and in some places street names and house numbers were subject to periodic revision. In rural areas addresses are often rather vague or not given at all.
4) Number of Rooms. Unfortunately of the CEBs made public only those for 1891 give information on the numbers of rooms occupied by each household so it is not possible to comment on the accuracy of this information. It should, however, be mentioned that no instructions were given on the census schedule as to what was a room. Were, for example, large cupboards or indoor toilets to be counted as rooms? One example, of an enumerator misinterpreting his instructions has been found by the writer in his researches into nineteenth-century Warrington. The enumerator having placed the figure '1' (one) against the address of each householder whose family occupied fewer than five rooms. At least one street enumerated by him, still stands today, and it consists of four-roomed terraces.
5) Definition of a Household. Another problem is that of what constituted a household. The instructions given to the enumerators were vague. This has affected in particular how lodgers, boarders and different families renting rooms in the same houses have been enumerated. In some instances families of lodgers appear to have been treated as occupiers in their right. On other occasions families co-residing at the same address have been treated as lodgers. The extent of this problem is difficult to quantify. But, because there were few complex (i.e. non-nuclear) households in nineteenth-century Britain, it is unlikely to be a serious problem.
6) People's Names. Few problems exist relating to people's names although it should be mentioned that the spelling of surnames only gradually became standardised after 1837 with the state registration of births, marriages and deaths. When attempting to link households and families across censuses this can create problems but a little imagination can usually sort them out. Houghton, for example, might become Houghton or Oughton. A case in point is that of the Elisons of Eydon's Yard, in 1881, who became the Alisons of Aydon's Yard in 1891!
7) Relationships. Interpreting relationships is usually straight forward but problems can arise in identifying stepchildren, the parents of grandchildren, and relationships among lodgers, boarders and visitors.
8) Marital Status. Marital statuses do not usually pose problems. It is, however, rarely possible to identify second marriages from the nineteenth-century CEBs, and cases of co-habitation have usually to be inferred from relationships such as 'servant', 'lodger' and 'visitor,.
9) Gender. Occasionally enumerators wrote a person's age in the wrong sex column, but such errors are easy to identify.
10) Ages. Especially in the early years of last century many people did not know their correct ages, and for older people age-data should, therefore, be treated with some caution. Moreover, at a time when the age of consent was 21 householders below this age often had an incentive to falsify their ages in order to rent accommodation and enter into legally-binding contracts. Similarly the ages of child workers appear on occasion to have been falsified to circumvent the various factory ages. Charles Shaw, for example, born in Tunstall in 1832 is shown as a eleven-year potter in the 1841 census. Anderson's (1972: 75) examined the accuracy of age data by linking individuals across censuses. He concluded that age data is fairly accurate and those errors he found tended to be small.
11) Occupations. A number of problems exist in interpreting the occupational data: a) job titles are sometimes vague with little or no information given on either the industry of employment or the actual job undertaken (in nineteenth-century Warrington, for example, a 'cutter, might be a 'glass cutter', a 'fustian cutter' or a 'file cutter'); b) it is often to distinguish between dealers and makers (e.g. did a baker bake or sell bread?); and c) although people were asked to say how many people - if any - they employed it is often difficult to distinguish employers from the self-employed and employees. For example, in the Hanley CEBs, for 1881, the writer classified a 'builder' as a manual worker only to find on examination of the rate book that he owned several houses having presumably employed other people to build them for him. More fundamental problems exist in using occupational data for women and children. Higgs (1987) believes that the occupations of many women, and especially of those in part-time work and/or working at home, were not recorded in the census. Again, aggregate census statistics published in the 1841 and 1851 Census Volumes for those areas covered by the reports of the various Children's Employment Commissions suggest that the occupations of children were often under-enumerated.
12) Birth places. Anderson (1972: 75) looked at the consistency of birth place data in Preston in the 1851 and 1861 censuses. He found discrepancies to exist in roughly 16.5% of cases, but in half these cases the discrepancies tended to be insignificant. one discrepancy found by the writer concerned a women shown as born in 'Ireland' in the 1881 census and 'At Sea' in the 1891 census.
13) Medical Disabilities. The least accurate data collected was the information sought on disabilities. The question was poorly worded and the replies given are often of little use. Higgs (1989: 76) quotes a study in Wales in which replies to this question included 'unhealthy from birth', 'helpless' and 'not well'. Many householders appear to have been reluctant to admit that a member of their family was an 'idiot' and when this description was changed to 'feeble-minded' in 1901 the numbers recorded as mentally ill rose markedly (Higgs, 1989: 75).
Copies of the CEBs on either micro-film or micro-fiche can be viewed in a number of places:-
The Public
Records Office in London.
It should added that the Mormons in co-operation with the Federation of Family Historians, have recently transcribed the whole of the 1881 Census for Great Britain. Micro-fiche copies of these can be viewed at the above places. The entire census is also available on CD ROM at a very reasonable cost.
Even though most European nations undertook national censuses in the late nineteenth-century, CEBs are only available for a few counties, most notably Norway and Great Britain. This is because the CEBs have either been destroyed or lost. Most of those for Ireland have been destroyed although those for 1901 and 1911 have survived and can be viewed at the National Archive in Dublin.
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Higgs, E.
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Higgs, E.
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Wrigley, E.A.
(ed., 1966) English
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Wrigley, E.A.
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