1861 Census of Great Britain
The 1861 census of the UK combined the three national censuses of England and Wales, of Scotland and of Ireland. All three UK-wide censuses took place on 7 April. However, the 1861 Ireland census records were deliberately destroyed by the Irish Government so this article focuses on the census records of Great Britain.
1861 census records online
- FindMyPast.co.uk
- Ancestry.com
- National Archives
- ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk (Scotland only).
Improvements since the census of 1851
The 1861 census remained broadly unaltered from the previous census of 1851 with few adjustments. One of these was the instruction to heads of family that they were now to list in their householder’s schedules any person who was travelling or at work on census night but who returned to the house next morning. Previous census schedules had instructed each householder to list only those individuals who had physically stayed in the house on census night.
1861 census questions
Full address of property.
Householder/head of family to provide personal details of those who stayed overnight on 7 April, or who returned the next morning:
- Name
- Relation to head of family (‘head’ = head of family).
- Marital status
- Age
- Male or female
- Rank, profession or occupation
- where born (county, town or parish). If born in another part of Great Britain or another country, the name of the country. A British subject born outside the British Empire, was to be described as either British subject by birth or a naturalised British subject.
- Whether a person was blind/deaf/unable to speak.
Scotland only:
- Number of schoolchildren (aged 5 – 15 years).
- Number of rooms with one or more windows.
1861 Census for England & Wales
Procedure
As with the census of 1841 and the census of 1851, householder’s schedules were completed by each head of family, collected by an enumerator on ‘census day’ and copied into the ‘census enumerator’s book (CEB). The household schedules were usually destroyed once their contents had been copied, whilst the CEB were filed at the General Register Office for England and Wales. Copies of these census enumerator’s books are available for online census research.
Census schedules of vessels
Separate schedules for ships were introduced for the census of 1851 but few survived. The 1861 census is, therefore, the earliest census for which you are likely to find any record of these schedules. Each ‘form for vessels’ was completed by the ship’s master who listed all individuals on board his ship (both crew and passengers). These schedules applied to both Royal Navy or merchant vessels at sea or in ports. The more distant foreign ports are rarely complete.
1861 Census for Scotland
Extra census questions
The Scottish census of 1861 asked the same details as its England and Wales counterpart, but also recorded the number of children at school and the number of rooms with windows.
These enquiries point to a nascent interest in the opportunity and living conditions of the Scottish people. Today, these additional questions give us a deeper understanding of our ancestors’ circumstances. (The ‘windows’ question was unrelated to the window tax which had been dropped a few years previously).
General Register Office for Scotland
Since the census of 1841, Scotland had conducted a census that largely followed the census of England and Wales. However, because it did not have its own General Register Office, the enumerators reported to a different set of officials to those in England and Wales – and the census records for Scotland ended up at the Home Office in London where they remained until 1910.
However, in 1855, the General Register Office for Scotland was finally established in Edinburgh and it assumed responsibility for the national census just as its counterpart in England had done two decades earlier. The Scottish census of 1861 now largely mirrored the census of England and Wales, and the Scottish census records were filed at the General Register Office for Scotland.
The British Empire
The 1861 census marked the UK Government’s first attempt at putting a number on the population of the British Empire; the seemingly accurate figure of 135,571,351 for the population of British India, was in fact an estimate. For the whole of the British Empire, a figure of £175 million was arrived at; however, the 1901 Census of the British Empire estimated a figure of around £259 million.[1][2]
| Country | Population |
|---|---|
| England & Wales | 20,066,224 |
| Scotland | 3,062,294 |
| Ireland | 5,798,967 |
| Total UK population | 28,927,485 |
| Channel Islands & Isle of Man | 143,447 |
Sources
[1]Census of England and Wales, 1861. General Report [Volume III] BPP 1863 LIII. (3221) p. 72
[2]Census of the British empire. 1901. Great Britain Census Office (1906). pp. xvi & xviii. The total estimated population was considerably higher than the sum of individual countries listed in the census table on page xviii.
[3]Census of England and Wales, 1921, Preliminary report including tables of the population enumerated in England and Wales (administrative and parliamentary areas) and in Scotland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands on 19-20th June 1921 BPP 1921 XVI [Cmd.1485] p.62 & 63.