Victorians Up Your Street
The public system for recording births, marriages and deaths began the same year Victoria came to the throne, in 1837. From this time on, all births and marriages and deaths had to be recorded by the Public Record Office, and certificates were issued for each event. The census also began to be taken every 10 years, with the 1841 census being the first to record the names of all people living in the household. A census is a kind of survey taken across the country on a particular day, and usually shows the name, age, occupation and place of birth of all people, including children, in the house. At the time, it allowed the government to work out how many people lived in the country, and what types of work they did. Nowadays, the census records help us to understand how people lived and worked in the Victorian Age.
Who was living in your town or village during the reign of Queen Victoria? You can find out from the 1881 census of England and Wales which is available free on the internet at www.FamilySearch.org. To see all the people in a particular town, go to Search, then Census, then choose the 1881 British Census. Leave the name and date and place of birth blank, set the Census Country field to 'England', then select the county you require then the town. Press search, and you will see a long list of all the people in that location.
The census of 1881 lists the following information:
It also listed any disability the person had (e.g. blind, feeble-minded).
The census was taken across the whole country on the evening of 3rd April 1881, and each person was listed at the address where they had spent the previous night, even if this was not where they usually lived. The people who visited each household and wrote down everyone's details were called enumerators. They were often local people such as schoolteachers and clergymen. The information was then copied into the census enumerator's books (CEBs), and these books were sent to London where clerks used them to work out how many people lived in the country and what they did. Not all of the information was correct, however, as many people at the time could not read or write. The enumerator often had to guess at how to spell a name.
The
information here lists all the
people living in the village of Sibford Gower, Oxfordshire in 1881. From the
map below (dating from the 1880s), you can see that Sibford Gower was a small
village with a church (Holy Trinity), a school, and an inn (the Wykham Arms),
surrounded by fields and outlying farms. What sort of work would you expect
most of the people of the village to be involved in?
There were 443 men, women and children living in and around Sibford Gower in
1881. Look carefully at the census information then see if you can answer the
questions below.
|
Who was the vicar of Sibford Gower in 1881? Who was the schoolmaster at the time? Who would you have gone to for help with moles? Who ran the Wykham Arms inn? Who ran the Post Office? Did the village have a higgler, and what did he do? Who slept in a hovel the night before the census? |
Further activities/information:
A very common name in Sibford Gower in 1881 was 'Hone'. Click here to visit the Hone Family website which has information about the Hone family in Oxfordshire from the 1600s onwards.
Who was John Bull and why did he sleep in a hovel? Write a story about John and what happened to him.