Content associated with: Comparative abstract, Ireland, 1831 Page 8
Census of Ireland, 1831
Matthew Woollard
The third census of Ireland was carried out in 1831. The relevant act (1 Will. IV. c.19) was only passed on 30 March 1831. The published report for this census gives neither an introduction nor details of procedures used at this census. As with the 1821 returns only a few of the original enumerators' schedules or notebooks survive. In the absence of instructions published within the report of the census it is necessary to reconstruct the process on the basis of these surviving returns and the published report.
The census was overseen by George Hatchell, described as 'The Officer appointed by the Chief Secretary of the Lord Lieutenant for digesting and arranging the Population Returns of Ireland', and was carried out during 1831. No precise date is given in the report and it is presumed that the census was carried out over some considerable period. It is likely that a similar procedure was carried out in 1821 where enumerators recruited from the local tax collection fraternity collected information viva voce from the householders. The questions asked were almost certainly along the lines of the British counterpart.
One surviving return, for the parish of Dunboe in Co. Londonderry is published on the web. This return gives the following headings:
Head of household, page, townland, building, family, males, females, male servants, female servants, total, Est[ablished] Ch[urch], Cath[olic], Presb[yterian], other, and notes.
The transcription may be incomplete because no information on personal or familial occupation is given, and these are reported on in the published reports. However, this particular return does give information on religion.
Analysis of the transcription does not quite match the published figures (given as Drumboe (Abstract of answers and returns, 268))., and while the transcription may be incomplete, as it does not given occupations, it does provide evidence that information on religion was being collected, which was not mentioned in the report. It may be, like occasionally in England and Wales, that the enumerator collected this information additionally for no other purpose than curiosity, but this is unlikely as there is evidence that this religious information was used by the Royal Commission on State of Religious and other Public Instruction in Ireland in their report (BPP 1835 XXXIII [45]).
The returns for this census are similar to their predecessors. Counties are subdivided by baronies and then parishes. For each parish the number of houses, broken down into the three categories of — inhabited, families, building and uninhabited, occupations, subdivided by families into three categories of agriculture, 'trade, manufacturing and handicraft' and others, persons (males, females, totals), males aged 20 and over, agriculture (employing labourers, not employing labourers, and labourers employed in agriculture), occupation (manufacture, retail trade or handicraft, capitalists, labourers (not agriculture), other males (i.e., non servants) and servants (males aged 20 and over, males under 20, and females).
An additional county table shows the results of a tabulation of the males aged 20+ in retail trade or handicrafts by occupational title.
The 1841 census report makes only a few comments on this earlier census: "with respect to the Census of 1831, it was taken in different places at different times, extending over a considerable period. It is understood, too, that the enumerators considered that they would be paid — and in many cases were paid — in proportion to the numbers they enumerated, the obvious tendency of which would be to augment the total numbers. These and other considerations induce us to believe that the numbers returned in 1831 were greater than the real population, or at all events that any error was rather one of excess than of defect." (Report of the commissioners, viii).
REFERENCES
Census of Ireland, 1831, Comparative abstract of the population in Ireland as taken in 1821 and 1831, arranged in the order or parishes, boroughs, counties and provinces; distinguishing the aggregate population of connected places, as framed for Great Britain, BPP 1833 XXXIX (23). [View this document: Comparative abstract, Ireland, 1831]
Census of Ireland, 1831, Abstract of answers and returns under the population acts, 55 Geo. III chap. 120, 3 Geo. IV chap. 5, 2 Geo IV chap. 30, 1 Will IV chap. 19. Enumeration 1831, BPP 1833 XXXIX (634). [View this document: Abstract, Ireland, 1831]
Census of Ireland, 1841, Report of the commissioners appointed to take the census of Ireland, for the year 1841, BPP 1843 XXIV (504). [View this document: Report, Ireland, 1841]
E. M. Crawford, Counting the people. A survey of the Irish censuses, 1813–1913 (Dublin, 2003).
D. V. Glass and P. A. M. Taylor, Population and emigration (Dublin, 1976).
Joseph Lee, 'On the accuracy of the pre-famine Irish censuses' in J. M. Goldstrom and L. A. Clarkson, eds, Irish population, economy and society: essays in honour of the late K. H. Connell (Oxford, 1981), 37–56.
S. A. Royle, 'Irish manuscript census records: a neglected source of information', Irish Geography, 11 (1978),110–125.