Introduction

1871

1871 saw the introduction of the first bank holidays, the start of an operatic relationship between WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan and the opening of Cambridge University’s first college for women.

In virtually all respects, the 1871 censuses in England, Wales and Scotland were carried out as before. Information was gathered for the night of 2 April 1871, and, as before, enumerators delivered schedules to householders and then collated the information in their books.

The basic information asked for was: name, sex, age, marital status, occupation, marital status, relationship to head of household and infirmity (blind, deaf, etc.). Two questions which had been asked only in Scotland in 1861 on children's education and the number of rooms with windows were repeated.

One novelty of the 1871 round of censuses is that there was a concerted effort to compile population statistics for the whole of the British Empire in a single place. It was discovered that Victoria’s Empire included over 31.6 million inhabitants in the United Kingdom, over 9.4 million inhabitants in the colonies and a staggering 235 million inhabitants in Ceylon and India.