Introduction

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CENSUS OF 1891.

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REPORT

TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY H. FOWLER, M.P.,

PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD, &c.

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Census Office, London.    
October 1893.

SIR,

The tenth Census of England and Wales was taken on April 6th, 1891, all persons returned as having been living at twelve o'clock on the preceding night being enumerated.

The enumeration was carried out by the same method as had been in use on the preceding five occasions. The 2,122 sub-districts, into which, at the time of the Census, England and Wales were divided for the registration of births and deaths, were severally subdivided into enumeration districts. For each of these, numbering in all 35,507, an enumerator was appointed, whose business it was to distribute to every occupier of a house or tenement in his district a schedule, to collect the same when filled up by the occupier, and to copy the contents of all the schedules thus collected into an Enumeration Book, distinguishing the houses comprised in all the areas, Civil or Ecclesiastical, of which separate account was to be taken. The Enumerators worked under the direction of the Local Registrars, and these again under that of the Superintendent Registrars. Those officers, having examined the books, and caused any errors or omissions they might detect to be rectified, forwarded them to the central Census Office, where their contents were tabulated into the form in which they appear in the three published volumes.

Each successive enumeration is necessarily, owing to the continuous growth of the population, a more arduous operation than its predecessor. But the enumeration of 1891 was attended by unusually increased difficulties. These consisted in part in the addition to the Schedule of new topics of inquiry, namely the languages spoken by the inhabitants of Wales, the number of rooms and of their occupants in all tenements with less than five rooms, and the distinction, among the persons engaged in industrial occupations, of masters, men, and those who were working on their own account and without subordinates. The main addition, however, to our task was due to the extra-ordinarily numerous changes in areas that had been brought about since 1881 by the Divided Parishes Acts of 1876 and 1879, and 18823 the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, and the Local Government Act of 1888, and by the instructions given to us by the Local Government Board that, in all cases of changed boundaries, we should not only ascertain the actual populations of the new areas in 1891, but also what had been their populations in 1881. This involved a laborious re-examination of very many of the Enumeration books of the census of that earlier date, and the transference, after prolonged correspondence with the local authorities, of houses and persons from one area to another.

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