Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM), England and Wales, 1921 study contains the standardised England and Wales data for 1921.

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 1911: 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.

The 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 9281 Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) Names and Addresses, England and Wales, 1921: Special Licence Access. See the catalogue record for 9281 for instructions on how to apply for those data.

These data are available via an online system at https://icem.ukdataservice.ac.uk/

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

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The data contain information on age, gender, household structure and composition, occupation, employer, place of work, education, marital status, birthplace and nationality. Further details are also available for those enumerated in institutions (including vessels and barracks).

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.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Great Britain Historical Database has been assembled as part of the ongoing Great Britain Historical GIS Project. The project aims to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain at sub-county scales. Further information about the project is available on A Vision of Britain webpages, where users can browse the database's documentation system online.

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Parish level statistics for England, Wales and Scotland taken from the 1801, 1811, 1851, 1891, 1911, 1931 and 1951 censuses.

Parish level statistics for England and Wales taken from the 1831 and 1871 censuses.

Parish level statistics for England taken from the 1821 and 1841 censuses.

Parish level statistics for Scotland taken from the 1881 census.

Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Great Britain Historical Database has been assembled as part of the ongoing Great Britain Historical GIS Project. The project aims to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain at sub-county scales. Further information about the project is available on A Vision of Britain webpages, where users can browse the database's documentation system online.

These data were originally published in the reports of the Registrar-General for Scotland. They were computerised by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project and its collaborators. They form part of the Great Britain Historical Database, which contains a wide range of geographically-located statistics, selected to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain, generally at sub-county scales.

The data comprise complete transcriptions of a small number of tables selected from the Annual Reports, and Decennial Supplements, of the Registrar General:

(1) Annual counts of births, marriages and deaths in 1861, 1881 and 1911.

(2) Annual counts of births (and stillbirths), deaths, and deaths by 5- or 10-year age bands in 1921, 1930, 1931, 1941, 1950, 1951, 1961 and 1971.

(3) Deaths by gender and 5-year age bands in 1881.

(4) Cause of death by gender and 5-year age bands for the decades 1881-90 and 1891-1900.

The data are always by county and sometimes also by burgh and district.

Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

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All data are counts of births, marriages or deaths except for population totals taken from the census.

This is an individual-level and longitudinal dataset comprising the life histories of men and women aged 60 years and over who were recorded in source materials related to the New Poor Law regime in late-Victorian England. The New Poor Law was responsible for the overall administration of state-funded welfare for the poor, particularly to those who were deemed ‘not-able-bodied’, of which the ‘aged and infirm’ were a substantial subcategory. The majority of those applying for welfare (or what was then termed ‘poor relief’) would receive a weekly allowance paid in one’s household, or ‘outdoor relief’. On average, single applicants could receive between 2-3 shillings weekly, although married couples could receive up to 4 shillings (Lees, 1998). However, an application for outdoor relief could be rejected by the Board of Guardians, who were responsible for issuing poor relief in their respective Poor Law Union. There were approximately 650 Poor Law Unions in England and Wales, comprising a group of adjacent parishes, and were roughly coterminous with the registration districts used as boundaries when preparing a national census. The Board of Guardians could instead offer ‘indoor relief’, or accommodation and care inside a Poor Law Union workhouse. Historians have found that workhouse populations came to be dominated by older men and women, and the character of the workhouse gradually changed from punitive prison into an institution predominantly providing care for older people (Ritch, 2014; Boyer, 2016; Schurer et al., 2018). Studies have shown that older men over women were more likely to be offered indoor relief, owing to perceptions about the domesticated nature of women and their more adequate provision of child care at home (Goose, 2005). Others point to variations in age profile, where those in their seventies and eighties were more likely to be offered outdoor relief (Boyer, 2016). Their research has often been conducted without detailed reference to the life histories of actual individuals recorded in the census enumerators’ books (CEBs). Therefore, the objectives of this dataset are: 1. To reconcile the entries of those recorded in the New Poor Law source materials with their appearance in the CEBs. 2. To trace the appearance of these names across censuses to build a more comprehensive picture of the socio-economic profile of older indoor relief and outdoor relief recipients. 3. To investigate differences between older indoor relief and outdoor relief recipients. To do this, census entries of individuals that appear in the New Poor Law source materials at two periods of their life course are transcribed. The ‘later period’ of their life course involves their circumstances when they were recorded in the census as aged 53-92 years in the periods 1881-1891. Depending on their traceability, they are then traced back to the ‘earlier period’ of their life course, where the individuals were recorded in the census as aged between 21-68 years in the periods 1851-1861. This dataset was used in a paper written by the present author, which focused on an assessment of 489 individuals recorded as living in domestic households that were traceable in both the ‘later period’ 1881-1891 and the ‘earlier period’ 1851-1861. Descriptive and logistic regression techniques measured the likelihood of receiving indoor and outdoor relief via occupational structure, migration, and the extent of relatives in the household (Heritage, 2022). A copy of the paper, presented at the British Society for Population Studies Annual Conference, University of Winchester, 5-7 September 2022, is available on request at HeritageTomS@aol.com Note that when ‘names’ are mentioned, they were only transcribed as part of the initial data collection, and are not released to the UK Data Service. Instead, each individual is distinguished by an anonymized ID code.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This project aimed to extend knowledge of late nineteenth century Scottish, and hence British, demography, by producing four parallel longitudinal data sets by linking individuals in the decennial censuses of 1861-1901 with the births, deaths and marriages from civil registers for the lowland town of Kilmarnock, the Hebridean Island of Skye, and the rural parishes of Torthorwald and Rothiemay, places with contrasting economic and social structures and physical environments. The resulting data source is rich in information relating to the social, occupational, household, and demographic characteristics of individuals, who can also be situated within their physical environment. The relatively large scale of the data-sets allows greater accuracy and detail in the multivariate analysis of mortality, fertility, nuptiality and migration. Special permission was granted by the General Register Office, Edinburgh, for access to the civil registers of births, marriages and deaths, and these have been linked to the census entries for the same individuals, allowing the creation of full or partial life histories. Linkage has been carried out using a sets of related individuals approach in a relational data-base system using computer algorithms and hand-finishing (see Reid, Davies and Garrett (2006) 'Nineteenth century Scottish demography from linked censuses and civil registers: a sets of related individuals approach', History and Computing, 14(1+2), 2002 (publ. 2006), pp. 61-86).

The terms of our agreement with the General Register Office for Scotland do not allow us to deposit the births, marriages and deaths for archiving, which prevents deposit of the linked material. However we can deposit the census material annotated to include the years of birth, death and marriage of an individual (but no other details of these events). Two separate census deposits are being made. This is a version of the raw data, with no standardisation or enhancement apart from corrections or changes to ensure consistency, notes made by data entry personnel, and household and individual identifiers.



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The data consist of transcriptions of the census enumerators' books for Skye, Kilmarnock, Rothiemay and Torthorwald, for the years 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901. The following information on all individuals within all households on census night is provided: address (three fields); forename(s), surname(s); relationship to head of household; marital status; age; sex; occupation; other occupational information such as employment status, where available; county or birth, parish of birth; language; and number of rooms in the household. The data collection also contains details of where each individual appears in the census returns by giving the name of the registration district, the number of the enumeration district, the schedule number as indicated on the census enumerators' books, and household and person identification codes created by the project. Some variables are not available for all years or places: see project documentation for more details.