In 2024, the population of the United Kingdom reached 69.3 million, compared with 68.5 million in 2023. The UK population has more than doubled since 1871 when just under 31.5 million lived in the UK and has grown by around 10.4 million since the start of the twenty-first century. For most of the twentieth century, the UK population steadily increased, with two noticeable drops in population occurring during World War One (1914-1918) and in World War Two (1939-1945). Demographic trends in postwar Britain After World War Two, Britain and many other countries in the Western world experienced a 'baby boom,' with a postwar peak of 1.02 million live births in 1947. Although the number of births fell between 1948 and 1955, they increased again between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, with more than one million people born in 1964. Since 1964, however, the UK birth rate has fallen from 18.8 births per 1,000 people to a low of just 10.2 in 2020. As a result, the UK population has gotten significantly older, with the country's median age increasing from 37.9 years in 2001 to 40.7 years in 2022. What are the most populated areas of the UK? The vast majority of people in the UK live in England, which had a population of 58.6 million people in 2024. By comparison, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland had populations of 5.5 million, 3.2 million, and 1.9 million, respectively. Within England, South East England had the largest population, at over 9.6 million, followed by the UK's vast capital city of London, at almost 9.1 million. London is far larger than any other UK city in terms of urban agglomeration, with just four other cities; Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow, boasting populations that exceed one million people.

These data formed the basis of a reconstruction of English population history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, published as The population history of England, 1541-1871: a reconstruction (1981) by E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield.

The paper Udny Yule read to the Royal Statistical Society at the end of the nineteenth century (Yule, 1899) was a landmark in social statistics. He applied multiple regression analysis to a question of social policy, namely reforms to the 19th century system of poverty alleviation in England. To do this, Yule created a dataset from administrative and Census data. Yule’s original dataset was not preserved, but because his data were drawn from public sources, it is possible to reconstruct it, albeit with some slight differences from the original. This report provides a description of how the dataset was reconstructed and how it varies from the one used in the 1899 paper.

An Open Context "subjects" dataset item. Open Context publishes structured data as granular, URL identified Web resources. This "Radiocarbon Sample" record is part of the "Cross-referenced p3k14c" data publication.

This study aimed to provide a more individual, micro-level appreciation of infant mortality data. Previously, the focus of these data had been aggregative, at a fairly high level of aggregation - the country, county registration district. To that end, a team of research students at the Open University has examined vaccination registers at the sub-registration district level for 22 such districts.
In 1853 vaccination was made compulsory and in 1871 legislation was introduced requiring all poor law unions to appoint vaccination officers and to set up a system of registration; this system, with only minor alterations, lasted until 1948. Under the 1871 Act, vaccination officers took over all the functions of the local registrars except for giving parents the statutory notice of compulsory vaccination. The vaccination registrar recorded the following: (i) the registration number in the civil birth register; (ii) date of birth; (iii) place of birth; (iv) name of child; (v) sex; (vi) name of father, or if illegitimate, mother; (vii) occupation of father or if illegitimate, mother; (viii) date of notice to vaccinate given to parent; (ix) date of successful vaccination, postponement or insusceptibility to vaccination; (x) name of medical man who signed the certificate; (xi) date of death of any child who died before vaccination; (xii) reference number in vaccination officer's report book on problem cases. From the monthly information on infant deaths, the vaccination officer compiled an infant death register on children dying under the age of one year.
Medical historians have begun to recognise the historical importance of the compulsory provisions of Victorian vaccination legislation, which entailed the growth of a complex administrative structure necessary for its implementation. This can been seen as a forerunner of the Welfare State, particularly as regards the development of the public health movement.
It is generally agreed that civil registration had reached a high standard of reliability by 1872, and as the vaccination birth registers and infant death registers are copies of the civil registers for the period 1872-1948, they constitute an unrivalled source of information on infant mortality for the period.

This Special Licence access dataset contains names and addresses from the Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) dataset of the censuses of Great Britain for the period 1851 to 1911. These data are made available under Special Licence (SL) access conditions due to commercial sensitivity.

The anonymised main I-CeM database that complements these names and addresses is available under SN 7481. It comprises the Censuses of Great Britain for the period 1851-1911; data are available for England and Wales for 1851-1861 and 1881-1911 (1871 is not currently available for England and Wales) and for Scotland for 1851-1901 (1911 is not currently available for Scotland). The database contains over 180 million individual census records and was digitised and harmonised from the original census enumeration books. It details characteristics for all individuals resident in Great Britain at each of the included Censuses. The original digital data has been coded and standardised; the I-CeM database has consistent geography over time and standardised coding schemes for many census variables.

This dataset of names and addresses for individual census records is organised per country (England and Wales; Scotland) and per census year. Within each data file each census record contains first and last name, street address and an individual identification code (RecID) that allows linking with the corresponding anonymised I-CeM record. The data cannot be used for true linking of individual census records across census years for commercial genealogy purposes nor for any other commercial purposes. The SL arrangements are required to ensure that commercial sensitivity is protected. For information on making an application, see the Access section.

The data were updated in February 2020, with some files redeposited with longer field length limits. Users should note that some name and address fields are truncated due to the limits set by the LDS project that transcribed the original data. No more than 10,000 records out of some 210 million across the study should be affected. Examples include:

• England and Wales:
  • 1851 - truncated at the 24th character (maximum I-CeM field length 95 characters)
  • 1881 - truncated at the 16th character (maximum I-CeM field length 50 characters).
• Scotland: for 1851‐71, truncations affect less than 0.01% of all addresses and for 1851 around 1% at most
  • 1851 - truncated at the 70th character
  • 1861 - truncated at the 76th character
  • 1871 - truncated at the 82th character
  • 1881 - truncated at the 50th character.

Further information about I-CeM can be found on the I-CeM Integrated Microdata Project and I-CeM Guide webpages.

The Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) project has produced a standardised, integrated dataset of most of the censuses of Great Britain for the period 1851 to 1921: England and Wales for 1851-1861, 1881-1921 and Scotland for 1851-1901 and 1921, making available to academic researchers, detailed information at parish level about everyone resident in Great Britain collected at most of the decennial censuses between 1851-1921. Users should note that the 1871 England and Wales census data and 1911 Scottish census data are not available via I-CeM.

The original digital data has been coded and standardised. In addition, the original text and numerical strings have always been preserved in separate variables, so that researchers can go back to the original transcription. However, users should note that name and address details for individuals are not currently included in the database; for reasons of commercial sensitivity, these are held under Special Licence access conditions under SN 7856 for data relating to England, Wales and Scotland, 1851-1911 and SN 9281 for data relating to England and Wales, 1921.

This study (7481) relates to the available anonymised data for 1851-1911, i.e. all available years except 1921. Data for England and Wales 1921 are available under SN 9280. The data are available via an online system at https://icem.ukdataservice.ac.uk/

Latest edition information

For the second edition (June 2024), the 1851-1911 data have been redeposited with amended and enhanced data values.

Further information about I-CeM can be found on the "https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/icem/" target="_blank"> I-CeM Integrated Microdata Project webpages.

GISST, (Global sea-Ice and Sea Surface Temperature) is a gridded dataset of sea-surface temperature anomalies and sea-ice coverage fractions covering the period 1871-2003.

GISST was originally developed as an extention to MOHSST that provided a globally complete SST analysis and sea-ice data. This is required to drive atmospheric general circulation models.

GISST has now been superceeded by HadISST. We now recommend use of HadISST instead of GISST for all purposes. GISST is only still available in case it is needed for direct comparison with earlier work where GISST was used. GISST is no longer updated or developed.

GISST SSTs are based on the in-situ data set MOHSST, infilled using Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) interpolation.

The current version of the dataset is GISST 2.3B which was provided by the Met Office Hadley Centre.

This study arose out of the Kingston Local History Project. The purpose of this project is to construct a database detailing major aspects of Kingston's economic and social evolution during the second half of the nineteenth century. The study contains complete census enumerator' books for the census years 1851, 1861, 1871, 1891.

The data set was created as part of the ESRC funded project Economic Policy and Political Myopia. The aim of the project was to study the degree of political myopia in public policy today and in the past both from an empirical and a theoretical perspective. The data on the number of voters in municipal boroughs in 1852-1884 was collected to investigate the link between spending on urban sanitation and the local voting franchise.

This Special Licence access dataset contains names and addresses from the Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) dataset of the censuses of Great Britain for the period 1851 to 1911. These data are made available under Special Licence (SL) access conditions due to commercial sensitivity.

The anonymised main I-CeM database that complements these names and addresses is available under SN 7481. It comprises the Censuses of Great Britain for the period 1851-1911; data are available for England and Wales for 1851-1861 and 1881-1911 (1871 is not currently available for England and Wales) and for Scotland for 1851-1901 (1911 is not currently available for Scotland). The database contains over 180 million individual census records and was digitised and harmonised from the original census enumeration books. It details characteristics for all individuals resident in Great Britain at each of the included Censuses. The original digital data has been coded and standardised; the I-CeM database has consistent geography over time and standardised coding schemes for many census variables.

This dataset of names and addresses for individual census records is organised per country (England and Wales; Scotland) and per census year. Within each data file each census record contains first and last name, street address and an individual identification code (RecID) that allows linking with the corresponding anonymised I-CeM record. The data cannot be used for true linking of individual census records across census years for commercial genealogy purposes nor for any other commercial purposes. The SL arrangements are required to ensure that commercial sensitivity is protected. For information on making an application, see the Access section.

The data were updated in February 2020, with some files redeposited with longer field length limits. Users should note that some name and address fields are truncated due to the limits set by the LDS project that transcribed the original data. No more than 10,000 records out of some 210 million across the study should be affected. Examples include:

• England and Wales:
  • 1851 - truncated at the 24th character (maximum I-CeM field length 95 characters)
  • 1881 - truncated at the 16th character (maximum I-CeM field length 50 characters).
• Scotland: for 1851‐71, truncations affect less than 0.01% of all addresses and for 1851 around 1% at most
  • 1851 - truncated at the 70th character
  • 1861 - truncated at the 76th character
  • 1871 - truncated at the 82th character
  • 1881 - truncated at the 50th character.

Further information about I-CeM can be found on the I-CeM Integrated Microdata Project and I-CeM Guide webpages.