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Census of 1911: England and Wales

Higgs & Schürer (2013)

The 1911 census, held on 2/3 April of that year under the provisions of the 1910 Census (Great Britain) Act (10 Edw, 7 & 1 Geo. 5), was significant in a number of ways. First, it contained a survey of marital fertility in which questions were asked about the births of all children of married women. This was the first time that information other than that pertaining to the actual residents of households on Census Night had been sought. Secondly, the extra work involved in analysing this and other new information supplied in the census threatened to overburden the manual forms of data handling used in the previous censuses. This led to the introduction of the machine tabulation of data in both London and Edinburgh, and tabulation direct from the household schedules in the former. In addition, in England and Wales the analysis of the 1911 census returns, and the publication of results, were interrupted by the First World War. The final volume on the 1911 fertility survey in England and Wales was not published until 1923. The Scots, however, had analysed and published all their Reports prior to 1914, and this may reflect an important difference between way in which the census was taken north and south of the border.

The 1911 census in England and Wales, organized by Sir Bernard Mallett as Registrar General and T. H. C. Stevenson as Superintendent of Statistics, asked for all the information sought on household members in 1901 - relationship to head, age and sex, marital status, occupation, employment status, whether working at home, birthplaces and medical infirmities. The questions relating to language spoken were repeated in Wales, Scotland, and the Isle of Man (see documents below). There was no column on the household schedule for the number of rooms inhabited but this information was collected by the enumerators separately. As before, institutions and ships arriving in British ports within a set period were given their own schedules. As usual, household schedules in Welsh were produced but the enumerators' books were always in English. But a number of new columns were introduced into the schedule, relating to the nationality of people born outside of the country (British by parentage, a naturalised British subject, or a foreign subject), the 'industry or service with which [the] worker is connected', and lastly the children born to married women. The latter was a tri-part enquiry, asking for the total number of children born alive to the present marriage, the number still alive, and the number who had died.[1] The industrial question seems to have reflected the desire of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade to gain information on the number of people, especially recipients of unemployment benefits under the 1911 National Insurance Act, who would be affected by downturns in particular trades.[2] The inquiry into marital fertility was introduced to provide data on whether the poorer classes were having more children than those higher in the social scale. This was linked to the concerns of eugenicists, who believed that this was leading to the genetic decline of the British 'race' at a time of imperial and economic crisis. In order to undertake a class-based analysis of the fertility data, the London GRO developed a socio-economic classification, which placed families into classes according to the occupations of household heads.[3] Returns from military establishments from all over the Empire were also collected giving name, rank, age, marital condition, unit, trade, birthplace, and whether the soldier was absent on Census Night.

The 1911 fertility survey was an important development in its own right, but just as important for the future were the consequences this had for the data processing capabilities of the Edinburgh and London GROs. As noted above, prior to this date, the clerks in the two Offices had abstracted data from the enumerators' books on large sheets of paper.[4] In order to analyse the fertility data, and that gathered by the other new census enquiries, both Offices introduced the use of Hollerith punch card tabulators. In England and Wales tabulation was done directly from the household schedules, and as a result the latter were no longer copied by enumerators into enumeration books for dispatch to the London Census Office as in previous years.[5] In order to facilitate card punching, clerks wrote the number codes for variables such as occupational groups on the schedules, which have been incorporated into the I-CeM data collection. In Scotland, however, the census authorities did not dispense with the census enumerators' books, and their standardized format, data standardization, and more legible handwriting, may explain why Edinburgh was able to process the census returns before the London GRO. Also, the Scots do not seem to have attempted to analyse the fertility data by socio-economic groupings, something that took London 16 years to achieve.

In 1901, the census publications for England and Wales (see references below) had included a large number of individual volumes covering all the data for each county, and this was also to be the pattern in 1921 and 1931. But in 1911 a different strategy was pursued. As in previous years, the first volumes to be published were preliminary reports. First, a Preliminary Report was issued in 1911 giving bare data on the population (individuals and families) in administrative, registration and parliamentary areas. This was followed in the next year by four volumes (Volumes I-IV) giving more detailed figures for the areas, numbers of families and population in administrative, registration, parliamentary and ecclesiastical areas. An index to named places in these volumes made up Volume V. The years 1912 and 1913 also saw the publication of a number of individual volumes (Volumes VI-XI) covering specific characteristics of the population, including age and marital condition, birthplaces, occupations and industries, language spoken, and physical and mental infirmities. The final volume to be published before the First World War was, as in former years, a volume dedicated to the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. The information reported here was similar to that for England and Wales. However, although a question was again asked in the Isle of Man whether those three years old and over spoke only English, only Manx, or both, the results were not published.

The outbreak of the First World War hit the London GRO hard. Not only did many of its staff leave for the Front, it also had to take on new duties, such as providing evidence of marriage and paternity for the payment of allowances to the dependents of soldiers and sailors. It also took on the organization of National Registration, which was the basis of conscription and rationing.98 The appearance of the rest of the volumes of the 1911 census was delayed as a result. In the parliamentary session 1914-16 two volumes were released, a list of occupations and rules for their classification, and a series of summary tables. The 1917-18 parliamentary session saw the publication of a General Report, with an updated series of summary tables, and of tables summarizing data from the fertility of marriage survey. But it was in 1923, two years after the first results of the 1921 census had been published, that the final discursive report on the fertility of marriage survey was published. This was the first paper giving results from the census that was not a Parliamentary Paper, a pattern followed in subsequent years.

1911 Census Publications: England and Wales; Islands in the British Seas

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Preliminary report with tables of the population enumerated in England and Wales (administrative, registration and parliamentary areas). And in Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, on 3rd April, 1911. BPP 1911 LXXI 479- [Cd. 5705].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Area, families or separate occupiers, and population. Vol. I. Administrative areas. Counties, urban and rural districts, &c. BPP 1912-13 CXI 1- [Cd. 6258].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Area, families or separate occupiers, and population. Vol. II. Registration areas. BPP 1912-13 CXI 679- [Cd. 6259].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Area, families or separate occupiers, and population. Vol. III. Parliamentary areas. BPP 1912-13 CXII 1- [Cd. 6343].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Families or separate occupiers, and population. Vol. IV. Ecclesiastical areas. BPP 1912-13 CXII 53- [Cd. 6360].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Vol. V. Index to the population tables for England and Wales in volumes I-IV of the census report, 1911. BPP 1912-13 CXII 593- [Cd. 6576].

Census of England and Wales. 1911, Families or separate occupiers, and population. Vol. VI. Buildings of various kinds. BPP 1912-13 CXIII 1- [Cd. 6577].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Vol. VIII. Tenements in administrative counties and urban and rural districts. BPP 1913 LXXVII 1- [Cd. 6910].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Vol. XII. Language spoken in Wales and Monmouthshire. BPP 1913 LXXIX 885- [Cd. 6911].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Vol. IX. Birthplaces of persons enumerated in administrative counties, county boroughs, &c., and ages and occupations of foreigners. BPP 1913 LXXVIII 1- [Cd. 7017].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Vol. X. Occupations and industries. Part I containing report and all tables, except table 13 (giving a condensed list of occupations of males and females at ages in administrative counties, county boroughs, etc.), which forms part II of this volume. BPP 1913 LXXVIII 321-, LXXIX 1- [Cd. 7018, 7019].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Vol. XI. Infirmities. Persons returned as totally blind, totally deaf, deaf and dumb, lunatic, imbecile and feeble-minded. BPP 1913 LXXIX 791- [Cd. 7020].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Vol. X. Appendix. Classified and alphabetical lists of occupations and rules adopted for classification. BPP 1914-16 LXXXI 1- [Cd. 7660].

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Vol. XIII. Fertility of marriage. Part I. BPP 1917-18 XXXV [Cd.8678]

Census of England and Wales, 1911, Vol. XII. Fertility of marriage. Part II. (London: HMSO, 1923)