The 1871 Census – held on 2 April 1871

The 1871 Census of the UK involved three separate censuses. These were held in the three separate jurisdictions of the UK; the 1871 census of England and Wales, of Scotland and of Ireland. The 1871 Ireland census records have not survived and this article, therefore, focuses on the census records of Great Britain (i.e. England and Wales, and of Scotland).

The Householder’s Schedule

This census form instructed every ‘occupier or Person in charge of the Dwelling’ (i.e. the householder) to enter the personal details of every person who ‘slept or abode’ in the dwelling on census night, or who returned home the next day from travel or work.

The ‘disability’ question was extended. Previously it only asked if an individual was ‘deaf-and-dumb’ or blind. Now, it added ‘imbecile or idiot’ and ‘lunatic’ to the list of disabilities. Not everyone took these new questions seriously; the Preliminary Report cites a husband claiming that his wife considered him to be an imbecile and a lunatic.

‘General Instruction’ for the ‘occupation’ question

The ‘General Instruction’ was a list of instructions to householders that accompanied the ‘Rank, profession or occupation’ question. These instructions were not reprinted in the ‘Census Enumerator’s Book’ so it is easy to overlook them.

The most significant addition to these instructions involved an explicit request to declare unemployment status (if applicable). Previously, this question had been implied.

The rest of these instructions were broadly the same as those for the previous census of 1861. Multiple occupations were still to be listed, and those employers engaged in ‘Trades, Manufactures, or other Business’, were to be identified as such, along with the number of workpeople (example given: ‘6 men and 2 boys’). The same applied to business partnerships. Farmers, as before, had to provide the number of acres and number of workers who were to be split between ‘men, women, and boys’; this was the first time that women were specifically mentioned as potential workers.

The Census Enumerator’s Book

Each enumerator was responsible for collecting the completed householder’s schedules within his (women were not eligible to be enumerators) ‘enumeration district’ and copying their contents into a ‘Census Enumerator’s Book’. The schedules were then destroyed, so we only have the collection of enumerator’s books as our census records (and it is these ‘CEB’s that are published online). As these census books were only designed for official use, they did not always publish in full the census questions as seen by the householder – e.g. the ‘Where Born’ question in the CEB was reduced to simply ‘Where Born’.

Population Recorded

UK population figures recorded for the 1871 census.

1871 Census – Population recorded

Country	Population	†Change(%)
†Change(%) since last census. Source: Census of England and Wales, 1921, Preliminary report. Please visit Census Records for population in other census years.
England	21,495,219	13.4%
Wales	1,217,047	9.5%
Scotland	3,360,018	9.7%
Ireland	5,412,377	-6.7%
UK population	31,484,661	8.8%
Islands of the British Seas	144,638	.8%
Rest of Empire	203,173,294

The population of the British Empire

The 1871 census was the first national census to record the population figures of the British Empire with any real accuracy. (An attempt was first made in the census of 1861 but the bulk of it – India – was an estimate). The 1871 General Report gave a total population figure of: 234,762,593, later increased by 40,000 to 234,802,593 in the 1881 General Report (please see our Census Records page for more information).

Victorian Britain at the time of the April 1871 Census

Prime Minister

William Ewart Gladstone (1868 to 1874)

Government of the day

The Liberals

Foreign Secretary

George Leveson Gower, Earl Granville (1870 to 1874)

Chancellor of the Exchequer

Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke (1868 to 1873)

Historical Snapshot – Victorian Britain in the decade up to the 1871 Census

Domestic Affairs

14 December 1861. Prince Albert dies, aged only 42

At the beginning of the 1860s, Queen Victoria was plunged into mourning by the death of her beloved Prince Albert. Although Albert struggled to win the affection of the British public (largely on account of his German heritage) he was a positive influence on Queen Victoria and his absence, coupled with Victoria’s prolonged mourning, contributed to the rise of the republican movement.

Three days before the 1871 Census, the Royal Albert Hall was opened; almost 10 years after Prince Albert’s untimely death.

1865. The death of Palmerston from a chill, aged 80

Palmerston died only a few months after winning the 1865 General Election and remains the last Prime Minister to have died in office (two days short of his 81st birthday). He was a rare exception to the rule that all ‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure’ (Enoch Powell). Nevertheless, in his last foray into foreign policy he was hopelessly outmanoeuvred by Bismarck (following the Second Schleswig War).

Reform

The 1867 Reform Act extended the vote to most male householders (i.e. ‘respectable men’). It meant that, for the first time, over one million votes were cast in the 1868 General Election (three times the number of votes cast in the previous election).

There were some modest movements in social reform. In 1870, the Married Women’s Property Act gave some rights to married women to retain property. It enabled them to keep their own wages and inherit property (with certain restrictions). In the same year, the the Elementary Education Act (aka Forster’s Education Act) introduced a national system of primary education and is considered to be the first piece of ‘education’ legislation in Britain.

Ireland

When Gladstone became Prime Minister in the 1868 General Election his stated mission was ‘to pacify Ireland’. A year later, despite being a staunch churchman, he disestablished the Church of Ireland because he recognised the unfairness of extracting church tithes from a mainly Catholic population.

In 1870, the Home Government Association was established by Isaac Butt to campaign for Irish home rule. Later that same year, the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act gave legal protections to tenants but failed to address what the Irish really wanted: fair rents, fixed periods of tenure or, preferably, outright ownership.

Industry, science and Technology

In July 1866, London became the world’s centre in telecommunications when the first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable was laid. (Although a previous cable had been laid 8 years previously, it had burned out after a only a few weeks.)

However, not all technological progress was encouraged. The Locomotive ‘Red Flag’ Act of 1865 imposed a 2 mile speed limit on steam powered cars (4 miles out of town), plus a requirement that a man had to walk 60 yards in front of a car waving a red flag. The consequences of this act: steam cars were developed in India.

Meanwhile, in the field of medicine, Joseph Lister published ‘Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery’ (1867) in the Lancet. Lister was roundly mocked when he used carbolic acid as an antiseptic on his accident ward, but attitudes rapidly changed when the mortality rate on his ward plummeted from 45% to 15%.

Another long reaching development was the patenting of the first typewriter by Christopher Scholes in 1867 (USA). The problem of keys jamming was solved (partly) by the introduction of the QWERTY keyboard a year later. Although the QWERTY layout is far from ideal, we’ve stuck with it ever since.

Foreign Affairs

Two events dominated the decade leading up to the 1871 Census; the American War of Independence and the birth of a unified Germany.

12 Apr 1861 – 9 May 1865. The American Civil War

Within days of the 1861 Census, the American Civil War erupted. Palmerston (then Prime Minister) and Russell (then Foreign Secretary) largely managed to avoid being drawn into this conflict. There were, however, a couple of dicey moments; such as the ‘Alabama Affair’ which involved a British ship being used to sink several Unionist ships.

The rise of Germany and the fall of France

The 1860s witnessed the rise of the German state followed three pivotal military adventures; the Second Schleswig War (1864), the Austro-Prussian ‘Seven Weeks’ War (1866) and, finally, the Franco-Prussian War (1870 – 71). The Franco-Prussian War, in which Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan, resulted in both the destruction of the French empire and the unification of Germany.

1868 – 1874. Bardwell’s Army reforms

The alarming military might of Prussia brought into sharp relief the need for a professional army, rather than the haphazard ‘gentleman-soldier’ arrangement that had been so unsatisfactory in the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny. Bardwell (Secretary of State for War between 1870 and 1874) introduced major reforms including the abolition of flogging, bounty money, and the purchase of army commissions. Not before time, the British army had become a professional fighting force.