Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM)

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Jump to: Census taking 1851-1871 | Census taking 1881-1911 | Taking the Victorian and Edwardian censuses

The history of British census taking

Higgs & Schürer (2013)

Before the nineteenth century, the British state does not seem to have been very interested in general population statistics. This is in marked contrast to some other European countries. Thus, a complete census was taken in Iceland in 1703. In 1749 the Swedish clergy, who had long kept lists of parishioners, were required to make returns from which the total population of Sweden (including Finland) was obtained, and a similar exercise took place in Denmark in 1787. In Austria under the impact of Maria Theresa's population policy, partly a response to the effects of European wars, censuses were initiated in 1754. Various Italian states also conducted approximately accurate enumerations in the eighteenth century: Sardinia in 1773 and 1795; Parma in 1770; and Tuscany in 1766. Such enumerations also occurred in several German states from 1742 onwards. Such enumerations seem to have been associated with the creation of enlightenment states dedicated to enhancing their military resources in an era of almost constant warfare.[1] In the newly created USA, however, the first census of 1790 had a more democratic purpose, since the population of the individual states was the basis of representation in Congress.[2] Britain had neither reason for taking the census prior to the nineteenth century, since it depended militarily on a navy mostly recruited from professional sailors, and was not a democracy. Indeed, the British fought democracy wherever it reared its ugly head.

By 1801, however, the context for a general enumeration existed. The period was one of war with Revolutionary France, bad harvests and food shortages - a typical Malthusian crisis of subsistence. Indeed, Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population had been published as recently as 1798. Large numbers of agricultural workers were also serving in the militia and so unable to work on the land. What could be more natural than the desire to enumerate the population in order to discover how many mouths needed to be fed, and how many were working to feed them? Aspects of the first census in 1801 do indeed appear to confirm this hypothesis. Not only was an enumeration made of the total population, an attempt was also made to divide it into three groups: those working in agriculture; those in trade, manufactures and handicrafts; and those in other employments. At the same data a separate agricultural survey to be performed by the clergymen of the parish was also initiated. The results of this survey, known as the Acreage Returns, show the number of acres in each parish devoted to differing crops and now form the record class HO 67 at the National Archives in London (hereafter TNA).

The 1800 Census Act (41 George III, cap. 15) was, however, explicitly called 'An Act for taking an Account of the Population of Great Britain, and the increase or diminution thereof', as were all decennial Census Acts until that of 1850. As well as an enumeration of the population, an attempt was also made to obtain data on baptisms, marriages and burials for the whole of the eighteenth century. This indicates that the reasons for the inception of nineteenth- century census taking should also be sought in the general population controversies of the late eighteenth century, regarding whether the population was expanding or contracting. There also appeared to be an interest in acquiring information via the census on the mortality and life expectancy of the working classes. This was linked, in turn, to a desire to improve the regulation of friendly societies - primitive insurance schemes designed to protect the families of workers against illness and death - through the provision of proper actuarial life tables.[3]

The schedule of the Census Act, 1800 (41 Geo. III c. 15) carried the following questions:

1. How many inhabited houses are there in your parish, township or place; by how many families are they occupied; and how many houses therein are uninhabited?
2. How many persons (including children of whatever age) are there actually found within the limits of your parish, township, or place, at the time of taking this account, distinguishing males and females, and exclusive of men actually serving in his majesty's regular forces or militia, and exclusive of seamen either in his majesty's service or belonging to registered vessels?
3. What number of persons in your parish, township or place are chiefly employed in agriculture; how many in trade, manufactures, or handicraft; and how many are not occupied in any of the preceding classes?
4. What was the number of baptisms and burials in your parish, township, or place in the several years 1700, 1710, 1720, 1730, 1740, 1750, 1760, 1770, 1780, and in each subsequent year to the 31st December, 1800, distinguishing males from females?
5. What was the number of marriages in your parish, township, or place in each year, from the year 1754 inclusive to the end of the year 1800?
6. Are there any matters which you think it necessary to remark in explanation of your answers to any of the preceding questions.

The first three questions were addressed to those responsible for taking the census by house-to-house enquiries on 10 March 1801, or as soon as possible thereafter. In England and Wales this duty was placed upon the overseers of the poor or 'other substantial householders'. In Scotland the task fell to the local schoolmaster. The fourth and fifth questions were addressed to the local parish clergy, who had to provide the information from their parish registers.

All the census returns had to be made on forms that were attached to the schedule of the Act, which merely asked for the insertion of raw numbers, rather than the details of named individuals. The official returns made by the overseers were to be sent to the Home Office not later than 15 May. There they were to be "digested and reduced to Order by such Officer as such Secretary of State (for the Home Department) shall appoint for the Purpose". Returns compiled from the parish registers had to be forwarded by the clergy to the bishop of the diocese, who was required to send them to his archbishop, who sent them to the Privy Council. The job of preparing the abstracts of the returns that were laid before Parliament was given to John Rickman, an assistant clerk of the House of Commons in London. Rickman ran all the censuses from 1801 to 1831, using similar methods, although sometimes asking extra questions on ages and occupations from his official informants.[4]

Although these returns are of importance to historians[5], they cannot be the basis of a nominal dataset such as I-CeM. However, Rickman died in 1840, and the administration of the British census passed to the General Register Office (GRO), leading to a fundamental change in the nature of the information collected. In the wake of the 1836 Registration and Marriage Acts, a Registrar General had been appointed as head of the national system of civil registration in England and Wales. This officer had a central staff in the GRO whose task was to maintain a central register of births, marriages and deaths, at first mainly to protect property rights through recording lines of descent. But the GRO also gradually developed a statistical function via the preparation of reports and summary statistics on vital events for actuarial and public health purposes.[6] The whole of England and Wales were divided up into registration districts, based upon the Poor Law unions, and a superintendent registrar appointed for each. These areas were further subdivided into sub-districts and part-time registrars appointed to them. These officers, initially often local doctors, were responsible for the registration of births, marriages and deaths within their sub-districts, and the forwarding of this information to the GRO in London. All that was necessary to turn this into an administrative system for the collection of census data was for the registrars to divide their sub-districts into smaller enumeration districts, and to appoint a temporary enumerator for each. The latter could collect the necessary information that would be sent via the registrar and superintendent to the GRO for central processing in the same manner as data on vital statistics.

The London (later Royal) Statistical Society had set up a committee to make recommendations on the 1841 census, and its report suggested a radical change in the organisation of the census to take advantage of the new Poor Law and civil registration systems. The members of the committee advocated the use of an official household schedule to list each individual by name, and to give various pieces of information about them. These were to be transcribed into books by the enumerators for dispatch to London. They also advocated a greater range of questions relating to age, sex, marital status, occupation, place of birth, religion and health. Eventually many of their recommendations were incorporated into the 1841 census, although the range of questions asked was much diminished.[7]

The GRO drew up the first Census Act for the 1841 census (3 & 4 Vict. c. 99), which incorporated many of the recommendations of the London Statistical Society, but also had certain similarities with Rickman's enumerations. The local gathering of information in England and Wales was certainly to be the duty of temporary enumerators appointed by the local registrars. In Scotland, however, the official schoolmaster was generally entrusted with enumerating each parish, while the Sheriff Substitute (or Depute) of each county acted in the same role as the registrars in England. The enumerators' books were forwarded from the Sheriff Substitute (or equivalent in burghs) directly to the Registrar General's Office in London for tabulation.

These officers were to gather a much wider range of data on the characteristics of the individual members of the population of their district than in previous censuses, and this was to be done on one night in the year rather than as previously over a period of time. The census was to be a 'snap-shot' of society at one point in time so as to avoid the problems of double-counting as people moved from place to place. Initially, however, it was envisaged that the enumerators would gather this information themselves by house-to-house enquiries as in previous censuses. However, a trial showed this would be very expensive, and schedules to be filled in by individual householders prior to collection by the enumerators was hastily authorised by a supplementary Census Act (4 & 5 Vict. c. 7). This was passed only some two months before the enumeration was due to take place.[8]

The rather ad hoc nature of the transfer of census-taking to the GRO, and the limited amount of time that the GRO had to plan the 1841 census, are reflected in the somewhat idiosyncratic nature of the resulting returns. They are certainly rather different from those of later enumerations. Its officials were anxious to produce as simple a household schedule as possible, and kept the headings of information gathered to a minimum. These included name, age (rounded down to the nearest term of five if over 14 years), sex, 'profession, trade, employment or of independent means', whether born in the same county (yes or no), or whether born in Scotland, Ireland or 'foreign parts'. Later censuses in the mid nineteenth century sought additional information on relationship to head of household, marital condition, full ages, the parish and county of birth, and details of medical disabilities. Because of the limited nature of the returns, the I-CeM data collection does not include data from the 1841 census.

Census-taking 1851 to 1871

The mid-nineteenth century was a period when the almost indiscriminate collection of statistics had become a mania, and the census can be seen as part of this movement to reveal the 'state of the nation'. The belief that certain laws, which were discoverable by empirical research, underlay creation was a very powerful strand in the intellectual make-up of the period.[9] Thus, iron laws were said to underlie the workings of the free market economy that were seen as ensuring a fair distribution of resources. Opposition to the existing economic system must, it was believed, reflect ignorance or unreason. The collection of occupational data in the census could serve, therefore, to reveal the true structure of the economy and so dispel radical discontent, which would lead in turn to the creation of sober liberal citizens.[10] The census also helped in the creation of this new citizenship in other ways. When combined with civil registration information on deaths, census data could be used to create statistics for deaths per thousand, thus revealing unhealthy places and occupations which rational men and women could avoid. Such mortality rates were also used to inform local debates on public health, and if very bad could lead to the compulsory establishment of sanitary authorities under the 1848 Public Health Act. Life tables compiled from this data were again intended to allow workers to insure their lives against ill health or death. Population totals for electoral divisions allowed the revision of electoral boundaries to ensure more equal political representation. In this way census taking was an extension of the project that had underlain the creation of the GRO in the first place – the creation of liberal citizenship through the underpinning of property rights via the registration of births, marriages and deaths, and thus lines of descent.[11]

However, it is also useful to see the mid-nineteenth-century censuses in terms of medical research. The central figure in the scientific elaboration of the mid-nineteenth century censuses was William Farr, the GRO's Superintendent of Statistics from 1838 until his retirement in 1880. Farr was a commissioner for the censuses of 1851, 1861 and 1871, and was said to have written the Census Reports of those years. He came from a medical background, and perhaps his most important work involved using the data obtained from the civil registration of deaths to plot the incidence and developmental laws of epidemic diseases. Farr was probably the greatest medical statistician of the period, and was President of the Royal Statistical Society in 1871 and 1872. His work was of great importance for the public health and sanitation movements of the period.[12]

Farr's model for the nature and spread of disease was based initially on chemistry, the biological germ theory not gaining general acceptance in this country until the 1870s or later. He saw disease as being caused by the intake of various chemicals into the blood, causing a process of chemical change that poisoned the system. Such chemicals could enter the body as dust particles, noxious fumes, suspended in water, and so on. But in common with other sanitarians of the age, he saw the primary source of such chemicals as being the concentration of human effluent in large cities, the result of the rapid urbanisation of the population. The more people in a given area, the higher, Farr reasoned, would be the level of mortality. This theory was one of the intellectual underpinnings of the movement to revolutionise the sanitary arrangements of the great cities.[13]

Calculation of population densities was an additional reason why the GRO wanted not only to know the overall size of the population from the census but also the number of people in defined administrative units. This explains the importance in the published Census Reports of presenting data in administrative units such as registration districts which were also used for the presentation of data on births, marriages and deaths. This would also explain the interest shown in the census-taking process in the structure of households, age, and marital status, which were seen as determinants of fertility, and in migration, the mechanism by which population was concentrated in the cities. Even the questions relating to occupations can be seen in this light. The census schedules made a specific point of asking householders not only to supply the occupations of the members of their households but also the materials upon which they worked. Farr appears to have believed that the material worked upon affected the character and life expectancy of workers, and he sought to use the data collected to construct occupational life-tables. These, in turn, were to be used to underpin the activities of working-class friendly societies. This would explain the structure of the occupational tables in the contemporary Census Reports, which presented data under headings grouped around the materials being worked up. The medical paradigm certainly did not exhaust the reasons for taking the census but it explains many of the features of the process.[14]

After the establishment of the Registrar General for Scotland's Office in 1855, the organisation of the census in Scotland was organised from Edinburgh. Although taken after consultation with the London GRO, the Scots were asked some additional questions. These included the number of children aged 5-13 attending school in 1861 and 1871, and also one giving the number of rooms in the house with one or more windows from 1861 onwards.[15] In some ways the Scots had broader intellectual horizons. They also defined certain entities, such as the 'house', in slightly different ways.

Census taking 1881 to 1911

In the later nineteenth century the intellectual climate changed, and with it the type of material collected in the census. Farr retired in 1880, and none of his successors in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods achieved his standing in the statistical community. With the gradual triumph of the germ theory of disease, improvements in sanitation, and the decline in the death rate and the rate of population growth, Farr's demographic and chemical paradigm for illness ceased to have the same relevance. In the late nineteenth century the rise of foreign economic competition during the Victorian Great Depression, eugenicist concern over the differential reproduction of the various classes in society, and a perceived heightening of class tensions, stimulated greater interest in the economic and social structure of the nation. This applied not only to economists and sociologists, such as Charles Booth, but to government departments such as the Board of Trade and the Home Office.[16] This led to demands for the broadening of the census questions that were voiced before the 1890 Treasury Committee on the Census.[17] These new preoccupations can be seen in a survey undertaken by the GRO in 1887 in which 'enumerators' obtained information on working-class conditions in selected districts of London. Men were asked their name and address, county of birth, marital condition, age, how long they and their family had been resident at their present home, the number of rooms occupied and weekly rent, time since last employment, cause of non-employment, means of subsistence when unemployed, and family contributions to income.[18] In the 1891 census in England, Scotland, and Wales, a question on whether a person was an employer, an employee, or self-employed was introduced on the recommendation of the 1890 Treasury Committee. In the same year the number of rooms occupied by a household was to be given in England and Wales if the number was less than five. This was plainly linked to efforts to measure levels of overcrowding for the purposes of housing improvement. But this in turn could be seen as a medical matter since overcrowding and insanitary conditions were regarded as inextricably linked. The Scots had, as already noted, been collecting similar information since 1861. A decade later the Home Office had a question added relating to whether or not a person was working at home, in order to allow an analysis of 'sweating' in various trades. Additional information was sought on the incidence of Welsh-speaking in Wales and on Gaelic in Scotland from 1891 onwards, and on Manx speakers in the Isle of Man from 1901.[19] Over the same period changes were made in the manner in which occupations were classified and abstracted in the published Census Reports. The tables became less concerned with materials being worked up, and more with economic and industrial categories, causing problems for the creation of occupational time-series.

The 1911 census in England, Wales and Scorland 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, birthplace, medical infirmities, and so on. But a number of new columns were introduced into the schedule, relating to the nationality of people born outside of the country, 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.[20] 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.[21] 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 such fertility patterns were 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 five classes according to the occupations of household heads. However, the Scots, who were unhappy about the fertility survey, only analysed the data by occupational sector.[22]

Taking the Victorian and Edwardian censuses

This examination of the history of the nineteenth-century censuses raises questions about the reliability of the information in the returns, and the comparability of the data between censuses. As the census-taking machinery was elaborated, and as the reasons for collecting the data changed, so did the instructions to householders and enumerators. An understanding of these changes is crucial to those wishing to use the censuses to compare the nation or specific groups. The following description mostly relates to England and Wales but the census machinery in Scotland was very similar. In the Islands in the British Seas the enumerations were organised by the local governors but the questions asked were usually similar to those in England and Wales.

The first step taken by the GRO in England and Wales was to approach its parent department (the Home Office prior to 1871 and the Local Government Board from then onwards) to get the necessary Census Act passed by Parliament. This authorised the questions to be asked and the disbursement of central government funds for the establishment of the census-taking apparatus. Separate Acts had to be passed for Scotland until the census of 1901, which was covered by a single Census Act for the whole of Great Britain. Having obtained sanction for expenditure, the GRO had to remind local officers of their duties, design and print household schedules and instruction books, and set up a central census office for processing the local returns. This involved hiring temporary clerks via the Treasury, training them, finding a suitable building in which to house them, arranging with the Metropolitan Police for night security, and so on. All this had to be done from scratch every ten years since the nineteenth-century Census Acts only sanctioned expenditure for the local collection of data, its central processing and the publication of reports. This process only took three or four years, after which the census-taking apparatus was wound up. The Census Office did not become a permanent institution in London until the early twentieth century. The work also had to be done at great speed since the Census Acts were usually passed only some seven or eight months before the night of the census.[23] This process of negotiation with other departments and outside bodies over the information to be sought could be protracted and difficult. There was thus a constant tension between the GRO's desire to keep the household schedule as simple as possible, and the desire of bodies such as the Royal Statistical Society to ask questions which were of burning interest to them. This helps to explain some of the changes in the nature of the censuses questions asked over time.

The organisation of census-taking at the local level was also complex, and somewhat problematic. The local registrars had to advise the GRO on any changes to local administrative boundaries, which could be legion. They also had to forward to London a list of all institutions in their district with the number of their inmates. If over a certain size, these were to be enumerated separately by the chief residing officer. The local registrars were also supposed to revise their plans of division. These were documents, copies of which were held both locally and at the GRO, which defined the enumeration districts into which each registration sub-district was divided for the purposes of census-taking. The 'plans', at least in the early years, were written descriptions of the districts rather than maps, which had been drawn up in 1841 on fairly rational principles. The registration districts were, at that period, meaningful administrative entities, often being co-extensive with the new Poor Law unions of 1834. These were in turn subdivided into districts for enumeration such that each should contain, in towns, no more than about 200 inhabited houses. The number depended, however, on the distance that the enumerators would have to travel; thus an enumeration district in the countryside contained fewer houses than in the town. Many registrars failed to change these plans from census to census and they became hopelessly out of date. The boundaries of numerous enumeration districts were not altered in line with local administrative changes, whilst shifts in the density of population caused ever wider variations in the numbers of households they contained.[24] This causes problems when trying to reconcile the raw data that is the basis of the I-CeM data collection, with the population numbers for places given in the published Census Reports.

Once this basic groundwork had been laid, the local registrars selected an enumerator for each enumeration district. They could appoint whoever they liked as long as they met the basic requirements:

He must be a person of intelligence and activity; he must read and write well, and have some knowledge of arithmetic; he must not be infirm or of such weak health as may render him unable to undergo the requisite exertion; he should not be younger than 18 years of age or 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 to deserve the goodwill of the inhabitants of his district.

In Worcester in 1881, a 16 year old farmer's son enumerated 1,924 people in a working-class part of the town but he was unusual, and the mean age of enumerators appears to have been in the mid-40s.[25] From 1891 women could be enumerators, and census indexers at the National Archives have spotted at least 34 in that year.[26]

Enumerators in England and Wales were usually paid a fixed sum, and then so much for every 100 persons above 400 enumerated, plus so much for excess travelling. In 1871, for example, the enumerators were paid a fixed fee of one guinea; 2s 6d for every 100 persons in their district above the first 400 enumerated; 6d for every mile above the first five covered in delivering schedules; and 6d for every mile above the first five covered in collecting schedules. It was claimed at the time that these rates of pay were insufficient in themselves to attract high-quality staff, or to encourage the greatest diligence.[27] On occasion the enumerators themselves entered their own protests about the poor remuneration they received on their census returns.[28] The GRO hoped to attract men of local standing who would undertake the job of enumerator as a social duty. In the towns the registrars appear to have often depended on local government officers and schoolteachers but in the countryside they probably fell back on a core of farmers and their kin.[29] In Scotland the local schoolmaster must have continued to shoulder some of the burden.

Each enumerator was supplied by the registrar with a set of household schedules, an enumerator's book, and an instruction and memorandum book. In 1871, for example, the latter contained columns for addresses, types of houses (private, public, shops, uninhabited, etc.), the numbers of household schedules left and collected at each house, and a column for notes. There were also spaces for recording the numbers of people temporarily present or absent from the district. The enumerators used the book to order the houses, to mark down where houses were being built, or were uninhabited, and to keep a check on whether or not they had collected all the schedules distributed. In England and Wales these records do not appear to have been sent to the GRO, and consequently have not found their way into the National Archives in London.

The enumerator left a household schedule with each householder (see examples of documents below). This gave instructions to the latter on how to enter the details required on each individual in the household on census night. This was usually in March or April in order to avoid the distortions in the data which would be caused by the seasonal movements of sections of the population during the summer. This process depended, of course, on the enumerator being able to locate a householder, something that might not be easy in the warrens of the Victorian city – finding the Fagin household in Seven Dials in the early Victorian period might have been a challenge.

On the morning after census night the enumerator collected the schedules. If these were not completed properly he or she was supposed to ask for extra details on the doorstep, although there is considerable evidence that this was not done uniformly. If householders were unable to fill in the schedule, perhaps because they were illiterate, the enumerator was to fill it in for them. The proportion of schedules that had to be filled out in this manner varied from district to district. In England and Wales in 1871 enumerators were asked to record the number of schedules they filled in themselves on the page in their enumeration books given over to summary tables. In parts of Manchester the proportion so completed was 25 per cent; in Christ Church, Spitalfields the proportion was 15 per cent; in Colyton in Devon it was 7 per cent; but in some Welsh-speaking parishes in Anglesey the majority were filled in by the enumerators.[30] Even within the same sub-district the proportion of returns completed by the enumerators could vary widely. In 1871, for example, in the six enumeration districts of Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, the proportion of schedules filled out by the enumerators ranged from 5.3 to 64.7 per cent.[31] It is not possible, of course, to gauge the number of the schedules that had to be filled out for householders by their neighbours or friends, or how competently this was done. Presumably the ability to read and fill in the schedule improved over time, especially after the introduction of compulsory education in the 1870s.

In the censuses up to and including that of 1901the enumerators then copied the household schedules into their enumerators' books, taking care to distinguish between houses and the differing households they contained. They also inserted into the enumerators' books details for each family and individual about houses, rooms, and institutions in which they lived. There is at least one known case of an enumerator who sub-contracted this process to someone else, with the result that over a quarter of the houses in the district were omitted from the returns.[32] In the process of copying to their enumeration books enumerators tended to standardise the information in the household schedules. In this they were sometimes following instructions given to them in the introduction to these books – 'Ag. Lab.' was the standard contraction for agricultural labourer and its synonyms. Enumerators were also to fill in the tables at the front of the books giving the numbers of houses and persons on each page, and the number of persons temporarily present or absent. The books were supposed to be checked by the registrars and superintendent registrars before dispatch to the Census Office in London but this often appears not to have been done. The household schedules were also sent to London at the same time.

In the Census Office the books were gone over again to sort out any problems or ambiguities in the data, reference no doubt being made to the household schedules. The clerks sometimes altered entries in the books and almost invariably corrected the enumerators' additions in the tables. Either enumerators could not count, or this is evidence of their work being rushed. Individual clerks then went through the books abstracting particular headings of information for the published tables. One would deal with ages, another with birthplaces, and so on. In the process of doing so they often ticked the items of information they were dealing with to ensure that no entries were omitted. At the end of this process the household returns appear to have been destroyed. There appears to be no record of their subsequent retention, or of their transfer to the National Archives, and they were certainly all destroyed by 1913.[33] Much the same can be said about census-taking north of the Border.

The increasing size and complexity of the census, especially the introduction of the1911 fertility survey had important consequences for the data processing capabilities of the census authorities in both London and Edinburgh. Prior to this date, the census clerks had abstracted data from the enumerators' books on large sheets of paper. In the case of occupational abstraction, the tabling sheets were large pieces of paper with occupational headings down one side and age ranges across the top. These headings were ruled across the sheet, creating a matrix of boxes into which the census clerks were to place a tick for an occurrence in the enumerators' returns of a person of the relevant age and occupation.[34] In order to analyse the fertility data, and that gathered by the other new census enquiries, both London and Edinburgh introduced the use of Hollerith punch card tabulators. These had been developed in the late 1880s for use in the 1890 US census of that year, and were being introduced into state statistical offices across Europe. The take-up of such technology was probably a consequence of the increasing size and complexity of national census enumerations across the Western world in a period of increasing state engagement with social issues. Tabulation was done in England and Wales 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 (Higgs, 1996b).[35] The 1911 household schedules are now the census returns in England, Wales, and the Islands in the British Seas, and this means that there is far more variability in the census data derived from them since there was no standardisation by the enumerators. The household returns also have annotations, especially for occupations, where the census clerks inserted punch codes for the Hollerith machine operatives. The household schedule now contained information about the number of rooms inhabited. In Scotland, however, the General Register Office Scotland retained the practice of creating enumerator books, and it is the latter which are the 1911 census returns North of the Border (see documents below). This probably means that there was a greater standardisation of the Scottish data in 1911 compared to England and Wales.

Certain groups were enumerated separately for administrative convenience. As already noted, inmates of institutions of a certain size were recorded by the chief residing officer on special institutional schedules. Customs officers gave the masters of ships in port on census night, or who arrived in port within a stipulated period, a ship's schedule in which they were to record the members of the ship's crew and passengers. The Admiralty handled the dispatch of special enumeration books to every ship in the Royal Navy, whilst the War Office provided information on soldiers serving abroad. In England and Wales these officers or bodies sent the schedules or books they collected directly to London, where they were amalgamated with the enumerators' books for the same locality for abstraction. In the case of shipping this could have bizarre effects on the published population tables for particular localities, since the crew and passengers on a ship could be added to the population of a village simply because the ship was offshore on census night.[36]