Shropshire Routes to Roots

2. The census (Family data)

Introduction

Every ten years, since 1801, a census has been carried out in the United Kingdom. The census attempts to count every person in the country. It collects information from every household, such as how many people live in the house, how old they are and the jobs they do.

The census provides governments with information and statistics. This allows them to plan their services better. For historians, too, a census is an important piece of evidence. By looking at a census from the past, an historian can study the way an area has changed.

The information used on this page is taken from the 1851 Census for the Wrockwardine Wood area. A Excel spreadsheet of the whole census for the Wrockwardine Wood parish is available on the More online sources page.

Using the Census to get information about one family

Censuses before 1851 had simply recorded the number of people and houses in a parish. The 1851 census was the first to give detailed information on every household. It recorded every person living in a house on the 30th March, the day the census was carried out.

The table below gives details about one household, that of the Pitchford family. Follow the links on each heading to find out what information each column conveys.

From this extract, we can work out that:

• The Pitchford family lived in the Moss area
• There were six members of the family. There were five children, the eldest of whom was 22 and the youngest of whom was 7. Susannah was a widow, so there were originally seven members, but her husband died.
• Eliza, at the age of 7, was the only one who appeared to be at school. There was a National School in Wrockwardine Wood in the 1830s, although some people listed as "scholars" may be "Sunday Scholars", working during the week. This might be true of Eliza Pitchford. The rest of the children, including Thomas, 12, worked at the pits as colliers or labourers.
• Originally, the family probably lived in the Lilleshall Parish, where William and Rebecca were born, moving to Wrockwardine sometime between 1832 (when Rebecca was born, in Lilleshall) and 1835 (when Catherine was born in Wrockwardine).

It is likely that the father of the family also worked in mining. Most miners, if they did not die from accidents, could expect to get some form of respiratory disease such as asthma by the age of thirty. One surgeon reported to the Children's Employment Commission that few lived past their 51st year. Women were quite often left to bring up children with the eldest son the main breadwinner.

Hard work in the mines Larger image, in a new window [50kb] [Reproduced with kind permission of Shropshire Newspapers]

Using the Census to get information about society

An even better use of the census would be to compare different families and households. This would give an idea about what a typical family was like in an area. For example, compare the Pitchford family with another household, the Webb's:

The Webb household must have been a very different place to the Pitchford household. In particular:

• Thomas Webb is a surgeon, a highly skilled and respected profession.
• There are only three people in this house, and one of these is a servant.
• Julia Ann Webb, Thomas's wife, does not need to work to support the family.

In fact, this family was probably fairly wealthy compared to the majority of families in the Wrockwardine area. To check this, you could go through the entire Wrockwardine Census, available on the More online sources page, and work out things such as:

• The number of houses with just two or three people in them
• The proportion of people in skilled jobs as opposed to labourer's jobs
• The number of houses with servants

This would show how most people lived at the time and what a particular area would have been like.

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