1891 Census

1891 Census of Great Britain

An 1891 census of the UK was held on 5 April 1891. As usual, it was made up of three censuses; England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. However, this article will focus on the census of Great Britain because the 1891 census records for Ireland were pulped during World War I.

Improvements since the census of 1881

The personal details collected by the enumerators remained broadly the same as the previous decennial 1881 census. Once again, there were regional variations between England, Wales and Scotland.

Employment census question

The employment question for the 1891 census was amended in all parts of Great Britain. ‘Rank, profession or occupation’ was reduced to ‘profession or occupation’, and the householder was asked to describe the employment status of each person listed in the householder’s schedule.

Welsh and Gaelic language questions

The ‘language’ question had first been introduced in census of Scotland a decade before but was considered vague – ‘habitual’ Gaelic speakers were identified by adding ‘G’ to the ‘where born’ question. This question was clarified in Scotland and a similar question was introduced in Wales to establish the number of Welsh speakers.

The number of Welsh speakers was put at 508,036 (Welsh only) and 402,253 (English and Welsh). However, the monoglot Welsh figure was regarded as overstated, with records of babies being described as speaking only Welsh).^[1]

In Scotland, the number of Gaelic speakers was put at 43,738 (Gaelic only) and 210,677 (Gaelic and English).^[2]

Household questions

In England and Wales, a new question was introduced asking for the number of rooms in each household (if under 5). This question did not appear in the householder’s schedule for Scotland, but the Scotland census continued to ask for the number of windowed rooms; a question first asked in the 1861 census of Scotland.

Procedure

The system used for collecting the 1891 census returns for Great Britain remained unaltered from previous census years. Householder’s schedules were distributed to every householder who was instructed to provide census information which included listing the personal details of all those individuals who stayed in his or her household on the night of the census (or who returned the next morning).

Census enumerators collected these schedules, copied their contents into ‘census enumerator’s books’ (CEB) and disposed of the original schedules. These books are, effectively, the census records we research today. A different procedure was adopted in Ireland and the householder’s schedules (or ‘forms’ as they were termed in Ireland) were not destroyed – but these census records were later destroyed during World War I.

Census 1891 – Population recorded^[3]

Country	Population
England & Wales	29,002,525
Scotland	4,025,647
Ireland	4,704,750
Total UK population	37,732,922
Channel Islands & Isle of Man	147,842

Sources

^[1]1891 Census of England and Wales, General Report with summary, tables and appendices (1893-94 cvi (C.7222) 629)

^[2]MacAulay, Donald (1992). The Celtic Languages. Cambridge University Press.

^[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