Learning from the census

 Having done my ten-yearly duty in filling in the census form (online) I'm reminded of how important previous censuses are to any historian of the 19th century, and how important they are to our knowledge of the Charterhouse.

The first census of England and Wales was in 1801; but it had very limited information.  It was counting heads, not naming them.  The next three censuses were in the same format.  It was not until 1841 that the names of the inhabitants were listed.  So we know where people lived and what their names were; we know their ages (rounded up or down to the nearest 5 years) and whether they born in the county.  We don't know the relationships between what appears to be a family group or who was married, who single; their actual places of birth; or their occupations.  Those drawbacks matter little, of course, in compiling a list of Charterhouse residents,

The 1851 census was an improvement.  This is a page of the Charterhouse return for that year.

The deficiencies have all been remedied.  We have "condition" i.e. relation to head of household; actual age; occupation; and actual place of birth.  There is also a final column to record whether the person is "blind or deaf-and-dumb".  (This very rarely has anything in it.)  The enumerator, who compiled the list, helpfully recorded the residents' former occupations.  

Suddenly we have residents we knew nothing about because they are not recorded in the register.  As I have noted before, when a married man was awarded a room his wife could enter with him but had no entitlement to the room when he died.  It was his room, and so the wife often did not warrant an entry in the register.  With the census we can see that there were many more women living in the Charterhouse than we previously knew about.

The 1861 census follows the same format.  Under "occupation" the enumerator has described them all as "almsman" or "almswoman" and added a former occupation if relevant.  Again, we can add previously unknown wives to the list of residents.

In 1871 the only change is to the heading of the last column.  Only one of those categories is one we might use today, and "blind" is, in fact, the only category which is used in the Charterhouse census returns.

In 1881 the enumerator doesn't bother with former occupations.  The first resident on the list is described as a "pensioner" and the rest are ditto.  It is an odd description; there were no old age pensions then; only former members of the armed forces received pensions, and retired people who had regular income from savings were usually described as annuitants.  

By this stage the column headings give us a clear picture of the "condition" of the residents, particularly of the lone women; if they are unmarried we have a good chance of tracing them back in the censuses.

The 1881 census, like its predecessors, was compiled by an army of enumerators going door to door.  But when it came to institutions like almshouses, along with prisons, boarding schools, prisons,  ships' crews etc, they probably just asked for a list from whoever was in charge.  This means we have to be careful about trusting the entries.  Many of us doing family history have found ancestors who lied about their age or even their marital status, and spelling can be wildly inaccurate when the it was left to the enumerator to make a stab at it.  The Charterhouse records appear to be largely accurate.  But the one person who appears on 5 successive censuses, Matron Jane Burn, was apparently reluctant to tell the Master her true age - or he was reluctant to ask her.  It was inaccurate every time.  Jane died in 1884 aged 93. 

The 1891 census follows the same pattern, the only change being that the instructions at the head of each column are more detailed.  The same is true in 1901.  

The 1901 enumerator has a novel way of recording the "relation to head of family or position in the institution".  All the residents are "inmate-Brother" or "inmate-Sister".  This must have been the description supplied by the Master, W H Fea; and he was correct.  We are all "brethren and sisters of the Charterhouse".

The 1911 census switched from street-based lists compiled by enumerators to individual household forms, but this made little difference to institutions like the Charterhouse, where everyone was listed as part of the same household.  The 1911 is the last census to which we have access; we have to wait until January next year to get at the 1921.  We await it with interest; what will it be able to tell us about the Charterhouse.