Census enumerators

Edward Higgs

The censuses organised by John Rickman in the period 1801 to 1831 depended on the local overseers of the poor and the parish clergy for the collection of information on the ground. Their job was merely to send Rickman the raw numbers of relating to the population of their parishes.(Higgs, 1989, 5–7). In 1840 the General Register Office (GRO) took over the organisation of the census, and based the local enumeration on the civil registration system that it administered under the 1836 Registration and Marriages Acts. The whole of the country had been divided up into registration districts, based on Poor Law unions, and a registrar of births, marriages and deaths appointed to each of them. For the purposes of the censuses from 1841 onwards, these registrars divided their sub-districts into smaller enumeration districts and appointed a temporary enumerator for each. The latter were tasked with collecting the necessary census information that would be sent via the registrar to the GRO for central processing.

The local registrars could appoint whosoever they liked as an enumerator, as long as they met the basic requirements. In the mid-nineteenth century the GRO laid down that the enumerator:

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, the 16 year old son of a farmer acted as an enumerator but the mean age of enumerators in this period appears to have been in the mid-40s (Drake and Mills). From 1891 women could act as enumerators (Lumas).

In the later nineteenth century enumerators 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. Enumerators often complained about the low rate of pay (TNA: HO 107/1531, f.193), and there were concerns that it was insufficient to attract high-quality staff, or to encourage the greatest care (Higgs, 1988, 83–4). The GRO hoped that people of good local standing would take on the job as a social responsibility. In the towns the GRO often depended on local government officers and schoolteachers to act as enumerators but in the countryside it fell back on a core of farmers and their kin (Arkell, 1994; Drake and Mills, 2001; Woollings, 1996). The enumerator could employ an assistant out of his or her own pocket to deliver schedules and the like, although it is unknown how many did so.

In the nineteenth century 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 instruction and memorandum book 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 inserting the numbers of people present or absent from the district on a temporary basis. The enumerators used this to put the houses in their districts in order, 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 household schedules distributed. The completed books have not survived, although blank examples can be found in the National Archives (Higgs, 1996, 204).

The enumerator had to leave a household schedule with each householder, many of which are elsewhere on this site. This gave instructions to the householder on how to enter the details required on each individual in the household on Census Night. On the morning after Census Night the enumerator collected the schedules. If they had not been completed properly, he or she was supposed to ask for further details, although this was probably not done consistently. If the householder could not fill in the schedule, perhaps because he or she was illiterate, the enumerator was to fill it in for them by asking the relevant questions on the doorstep. How many schedules had to be completed in this manner varied from district to district. In 1871 enumerators were asked to record the number of schedules they filled in themselves. In parts of Manchester 25 per cent had to be completed in this manner; in Colyton in Devon the proportion was 7 per cent; and in Christ Church, Spitalfields, the proportion was 15 per cent. In some Welsh-speaking parishes in Anglesey, however, the majority were filled in by the enumerators (Higgs, 1989, 13). In addition, in 1851 the census enumerators were also responsible for distributing to churches, chapels and schools the schedules for the Census of Religious Worship, and that of educational provision.

Until 1911, the enumerators then copied the household schedules into their enumerators' books. The enumerators' books contained instructions as to how this should be done, and the conventions that were to be used. In the process of transferring information from the household schedules, some enumerators standardised the information in the household schedules. They were also to fill in the tables at the front of the books, giving information such as the numbers of houses and persons on each page, and the number of persons temporarily present or absent. The enumerators then signed the front of their books, which makes it possible to identify them. The books were supposed to be checked by the registrars and superintendent registrars before dispatch to the Census Office in London but often this appears not to have been done. Certainly, the clerks in the Census Office in London were constantly having to correct the tables compiled by the enumerators.

From 1911 the duties of the enumerators were curtailed, since from that census onwards the analysis of the census data was done directly from the household schedules. The enumerators no longer had to transfer the data from these to enumerators' books, and, as a consequence, they became a far more anonymous group. This change was mainly due to the increased size and complexity of the 1911 household schedule, and the fear of increased chances of copying errors. If enumerators did not have to copy the household schedules into enumerators' books, this would help to reduce the fees paid to them, thus lessening the cost and increasing the accuracy of the census (Census of England and Wales, 1911, General report with appendices, 10).

REFERENCES

Tom Arkell, 'Identity of census enumerators — Cornwall in 1851', Local Population Studies, 53 (1994), 70–5.

Census of England and Wales, 1911, General report with appendices BPP 1917–18 XXXV. [View this document: General report, England and Wales, 1911]

Michael Drake and Dennis R. Mills, 'A note on census enumerators', Local Population Studies Society Newsletter, 29 (2001), 3–9.

Edward Higgs, 'The struggle for the occupational census, 1841–1911', in R. M. MacLeod, ed., Government and expertise: specialists, administrators and professionals, 1860–1914 (Cambridge, 1988), 83–4.

Edward Higgs, Making sense of the census. The manuscript returns for England and Wales, 1801–1901 (London, 1989).

Susan Lumas, 'Women enumerators', Local Population Studies Society Newsletter, 14 (March, 1994), 3–5.

Barbara Woollings, 'An Orsett census enumerator', Local Population Studies, 56 (1996), 54–9.