Introduction

1851

As six million people rushed to London’s Great Exhibition, Australia experienced a different rush with the discovery of gold. Science was entering the school curriculum and women were banned from buying arsenic.

An innovation for the 1851 census was the introduction of schedules for those living outside households and institutions on census night. Schedules for ships and institutions were introduced and travellers and night workers returning home after census night were now counted.

The scope of the questions asked was also extended in 1851. Apart from personal information including address, name, sex, occupation and place of birth, questions were asked about relationship to head of household, marital status and disability.

Furthermore, precise age was requested, which had not been the case in 1841. An attempt also was made to collect more detailed information about people’s occupations, providing more detail for the reports published after the census.