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Introduction

1841


Four years into Queen Victoria’s reign and change was afoot. While the new prime minister, Robert Peel, was having to deal with working class discontent, visitor numbers to Madame Tussaud’s waxworks soared and Thomas Cook arranged his first excursion.


The 1841 census was the first census useful to family historians. Four censuses, commencing in 1801, had been carried out earlier, but they were little more than head counts.


With the foundation of the General Register Office in 1836 to register births, marriages and deaths, the government had a ready-made infrastructure to collect more information.


A form known as a ‘schedule’ was delivered to all households in Britain by enumerators, who, after they were completed, copied the information into their enumeration books.


Details included in the 1841 books are the names of those who lived in each property, their ages (to the nearest five years), their occupation and whether they were born in the same county as their residence.


Fashion

An early photograph of a fashionably dressed man and woman. © Getty Images

The fashionable line – guided by Protestant ideals of femininity and greater separation of public and private spheres – was demure and respectable.

Sleeves were tightened, bodices elongated, and skirts were smooth and full. Plain fabrics, shot silks or brocaded flowers – also popular for men’s waistcoats – were favoured, with ribbon or lace trims.

Bonnets hid the profile and mittens, lace handkerchiefs and paisley shawls completed outfits. Centre-parted hair was smoothed around the ears, or curled into cavalier-style ringlets. Men had a similarly vertical silhouette in dark, skirted frock coats, trousers and top hats.

Footwear, for both sexes, was square-toed and narrow. Girls wore mini-versions of fashionable dress and boys wore frocks until they were ‘breeched’ at around five.

Fashions gradually spread to the middle classes. Maidservants sought to keep up, while poorer urban workers wore mainly second-hand or, for men, ill-fitting ready-made clothes.

The rural poor wore smocks, hand-me-downs or second-hand clothing.

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