Trivia
histpop online/ trivia
“On October 31st, at 3 p.m., there was great darkness at Norwich”
histpop exists to illuminate the changing demographic structures of Britain and Ireland from in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet both the census reports and the annual reports of the Registrar General are not only an important source for research about the development and composition of the population of Britain and Ireland but also a major source for the study of the achievements and limits of science in general and statistics in particular. The respective reports reflect the thinking and ideologies of their era. From our twenty-first century perspective, some parts of these writings may sound bizarre or even like an expression of bigotry. Within the limits of nineteenth and early twentieth century thinking they were accepted as normal and neither offensive or ridiculous.
As an example, the first volume of the Tables of deaths report from the 1851 census of Ireland, written in the main by William Wilde, quotes excessively in its overview information relating to diseases and weather conditions from Irish historical sources, which today’s historians would not consider relevant or appropriate for the purpose of creating an accurate climate or medical history. For example, the information recorded in the Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters (compiled from older sources between 1632 and 1666) in the year 416 that "Snow with the taste of wine fell this year" [View this document] may only provide evidence of extreme climatic conditions. More a child of modern science but similarly unusual, and possibly one of the finest examples of the production of a pointless statistic, is a table in the Status of disease report in the Irish census of the same year, which shows "…the varieties of Diseases and Accidents to the eye … together with the colour of the eye ..." [View this document ].
Another report contains some advice for both housewives and mine-owners. In the Twenty-fourth annual report of the Registrar-General (1861), William Farr, one of the leading statisticians of this era, made some common sense suggestions on how to prevent death by accidents related to fire: "Open fires, lights, and kettles of hot water, should be surrounded by GOOD GUARDS", and "Young children drink scalding water out of the spout of the tea kettle, or fall into scalding water. This happens often in the lower classes, when the mother is out at work, and the young children are left in the home alone. The means of obviating this danger are evident." [View this document] Just how the lower classes were to follow his ‘wise’ suggestions in practice is a question he does not address.
A statement on the role of women in society, full of pathos and paternalism, can be found in the General report of the 1871 census of England and Wales: "here are certain walks of athletic life from which women are inflexibly excluded; whether with advantage, without drawbacks, it is difficult to say, as many of the finest children are produced by hard women…" [View this document]
Traces of anti-Catholic bigotry can be found for example in some remarks about occupational mortality in the Supplement to the thirty-fifth annual report of the registrar-general published in 1875. While it is possible that a high number of publicans died of alcohol related diseases, the following remark about Catholic priests is less convincing and also shows some stereotypes about the lifestyle of clergymen: "The clergy of the Established Church, Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, and barristers all experience low rates of mortality from ages 25 to 45. The clergy lead a comfortable, temperate, domestic, moral life, in healthy parsonages, and their lives are good in the insurance sense. The young curate compared with the young doctor has less cares. The mortality of Catholic priests after the age of 55 is high; perhaps the effects of celibacy are then felt." [View this document] Catholic priests receive nothing but this hint regarding the causes for the inordinately high mortality rate among them.
Compare this with the treatment of the Anglican clergy in the thirty-ninth annual report: "A few devoted clergymen abstain from alcoholic drinks for various reasons, but they have not as a body “taken the pledge; some of the new as well as the old school, especially in Cathedral towns, are said to have appreciated sound port wine, which retains its old pretentions to orthodoxy; but the temperance of the clergy of the day is beyond question, and neither they nor the well-bred classes of society usually drink spirits or wine without solid food." [View this document]
Some reports highlighted problems with registration: the Twenty-seventh annual report of the Registrar-General of 1864 mentions some cases of corruption carried out by four local registrars who forged entries of deaths "…for the sake of the shilling an entry…, they were…tempted…into the commission of these extraordinary crimes for the sake of small sums of money…". [View this document]
Another crime happened just before the 1821 census was taken in Bishton, Monmouthshire, when a thief stole the parish registers from the church [View this document]
There were also no returns for the 1811 census for Allerton Mauleverer in the West Riding of Yorkshire because the parish priest took the records with him when he left the parish in 1804; attempts to track him or the register down were unsuccessful. View this document]
The level of local detail which can be found in the various reports can sometimes be tremendous. It’s almost always worth checking the bottom of a page of statistics for any footnotes. One of the reports from the 1861 census of England and Wales, for example, provides explanations as to why the population size of a locality has changed significantly since the previous census. For example, in Somerset, the following note is made: "The increase of population in St. Decumans is chiefly confined to that part of the parish of Watchet, and is attributed to several hundred navvies being employed on harbour and railway works." [View this document]
The same report makes mention of the fact that the registration district of Halsted in Essex suffered population loss because of the migration of labourers due to low wages. These notes are not simply restricted to the British reports. A note in the Census of the British Empire Report of 1901 explains why the occupational category of slaves in India was so small. It was, the note reports, because slaves were only enumerated in Baluchistan. [View this document]
Sometimes the circumstances on census day were not in favour of the enumerators. During the Irish census of 1871, for example, there was a fair in the small town of Edgeworthstown in the Parish of Mostrim, County Longford. These conditions prevented the enumerators from taking accurate data about the religious adherence of 288 men (out of a group of 299 men and two women), mainly drovers and cattle or pig dealers, which resulted in a remarkable increase (from 0.1% of the population in 1861 to 0.6%) of members of ‘All other Denominations’ in the whole county; all of them were enumerated as ’illiterate’. [View this document]
The specification of methods of murder, manslaughter or suicide in the registrar general’s reports can be considered as relatively macabre and some questions remain as to why they were reported. However, these cases do reveal some things about the dark and violent side of the Victorian era. For example, the Registrar General’s annual report of 1880 mentioned that a boy was killed by injuries because of being tied to a cow’s leg. [View this document]
Similarly, every report from the late-nineteenth century specifies in detail which poisons were (successfully) used for committing suicide. The remarkable potency of Godfrey’s cordial and Morrison’s pills is seen all too frequently in the tables of accidental death.
Almost all of the reports that are part of the OHPR website contain some gem or other which might tickle the fancy or perhaps annoy a modern reader. Yet, these “trivia” should not be trivialised. These notes, comments, attitudes, prejudices all add to the historical worth of these reports; and to benefit from these fully one must look at them through a historical lens.
This collection of trivia has been compiled by Ole Wiedenmann who has been responsible for much of the quality assurance of the content contained in the histpop website.