I was going to put this on the On this day in history thread but it probably deserves its own.
 
Today (March 10th) marks the 220th anniversary of the first census taken in Great Britain in 1801. From Babylon to Xanadu, from Domesday Book to the British Raj and from Augustus Caesar to Mao Tse-tung, rulers have sought (or have alleged to have sought) a detailed reckoning of their subjects.

What factors drove these surveys, how were they undertaken, of what value were the results and how reliable were they? And what stories and anecdotes are there relating to them?

"Census" is 4th Declension in Latin so the plural, strangely enough for something that deals so much with plurals itself, is also "census".

Many moons ago I had the dubious pleasure of earning extra cash by going around knocking on doors and asking for completed census forms to be handed over. Myself and my fellow government slave grew very downhearted during the first of our evening sojourns around our "patch", an area of Dublin for which the description "working class" itself assumes way too much, and within which resided denizens who - probably with good reason - had acquired a distinctive distrust and antipathy towards government officials of any hue turning up on their doorstep. For an exercise which involved a huge dependency on the good will and cooperation of the masses, not to mention doors at least being opened, this was proving quite a disadvantage.

We solved the problem - or at least my partner in her desperation contrived a solution based more on crude psychology than official regulation - by standing outside each targeted dwelling in best carol-singer mode and bursting into a rendition of that John Denver classic:  "Please fill up our census, like a night in the forest ...." (other portions of the lyrics were also suitably amended), often with junior denizens of the same area making up a proper choir accompaniment while they voluntarily and spontaneously escorted these two obvious (but entertaining) eejits along their route. It went swimmingly - that which we had anticipated would take five evenings took only three, and we even received complaints from some quarters that the residents of adjoining districts being serviced by somewhat less musical government drudges felt rather left out of the fun.

It's all electronic these days, I hear. The census, not the music.

I like that story nordmann and hope that the weather was kind during your collection rounds and that you didn’t have to ‘walk in the rain’. I looked at the list of Irish censuses (sic) on the National Archives of Ireland website to try and guess which one it was you worked on only to discover that there’ve been a whole scad of them. And they’re erratically sequenced too - sometimes 10 years apart, sometimes 5 years apart, sometimes 8 years apart, sometimes 2 years apart, sometime 6 years apart and sometimes 4 years apart. I had naively imagined that they'd have followed the 10-year pattern set by mother.

This year also sees the 200th anniversary of the first Irish census in 1821 when (along with Isle of Man, which also held its first census that year) the whole of the British Isles were counted. Although the Westminster parliament passed the Census Act in 1800 five months after the Dublin parliament had passed the Act of Union, the terms of that latter act didn’t come into force until January 1801. Thus the Census Act would be one of the last measures passed by the parliament of Great Britain and consequently applied to Great Britain only. Another of those last measures was the short-lived Brown Bread Act whereby, in an effort to make the poor harvest of 1799 go further, refined white flour was outlawed and only wholemeal flour was allowed to be sold. This caused uproar and widespread protest including an incident in which a miller in Horsham in Sussex found himself laid siege to in the windmill by a number of women who threatened him with his meal dressing cloths and told him in no uncertain terms what would happen if he dared to sell them brown flour again. 

There is a view that the poor harvest of 1799 and the accompanying social unrest was one of the reasons behind the push for a census. Another is said to be the introduction of income tax in 1798. This second suggestion, however, is difficult to support since the information collected in 1801 was very general and would have been of little use in terms of revenue generation. That first census was organized parish by parish whereby local administrators of the poor laws were tasked with collecting information on their respective parishes and this was then collated centrally. There were, however, no details relating to specific households or household income as such at that time.

P.S. Thanks for the correction re the thread title which I've now edited. I did think that 'censi' looked odd.

One theory about the different Latin declensions, which when taken together seem an impossibly complex grammatical construct for even the Romans to have got their heads and tongues around, was that they evolved from separate argots within Roman society. Latin "proper" people, without Etruscan influence, might have originated the First, Etruscans and Sabines the Second, and the Third seems to have been a later evolution possibly associated with the first big expansions. The Fourth, the smallest group and to which "census" belongs, contains a lot of legal and military nouns, suggesting just how separate a caste these roles probably once represented with the military sufficiently aloof and apart from the rest of society to manage to end up with a declension so weird it required the normal rules of grammar itself to be skewed just to use these nouns at all. Or, as one linguist put it, Fourth Declension nouns work best as one word answers to direct questions. Stick a shouted "Sah!" after each utterance and you could well see what he was getting at.

If you're going back over Irish censuses (I'm opting for that plural myself) you mustn't forget Ireton's census from the early 1650s. It was more like a Domesday Book effort to count all the confiscated assets after his father in law had thrown all the Catholics (ie. almost everyone) off their land but he also wanted to make sure that people with Gaelic surnames hadn't slipped through the net so ended up ordering pretty much the first head count with names conducted by any English authority. William Petty refused to do it for him (his own Down Survey of lands and topography was in full swing) so it was handed over to the military - one of the reasons possibly why Petty, an improbable "worthy" of the day even in Irish people's eyes, was one of the few Cromwellians to manage afterwards to keep all the confiscated lands he had acquired from a grateful Cromwell once Ormond and Charles II set about trying to undo his old military commander's handiwork. However he still admitted that even though he had objected to it at the time he was still impressed with Ireton's troops' management of what he reckoned could be a very valuable exercise (he was a statistics fanatic) and therefore suggested to fellow members of the Royal Society that maybe England should in fact contemplate doing something similar on a regular basis too. He even recommended that such a survey should not in fact enquire after one's religion - he reckoned this might discourage English Catholics from taking part - and nor should it be used as a sneaky property assessment. However he did say that he reckoned the kingdom was underestimating its population by about a third and if nothing else, he suggested, it might please the new monarch (Charlie had been fully restored by then) to know just how many extra subjects he had acquired over his unfortunate dad's tally.

So, hard to know who the "mother" might be when it comes to original censuses - except maybe if she was Irish by birth and English by execution then she probably wasn't that pretty a lady at all.

Interesting that about Ireton’s census which I hadn't heard of before. I had heard of the Down Survey and it’s certainly the case that William Petty with his statistician’s brain would have been an ideal candidate to work on the census. In fact such was Petty’s attention to detail that the Down Survey is said to have resulted in Ireland being better mapped than any country including Britain. And this state of affairs would remain the case for nearly 150 years until the Ordnance Survey published it’s first one-inch-one-mile map of Kent which was co-incidentally in 1801. Large scale maps would then be rolled out for the rest of Great Britain and Ireland over the next 50 years. In this way, the toing and froing across the Irish Sea of demographic census-taking and topographical surveying seemingly mirrored each other.

Noteworthy among the list of Irish censuses is the one which didn’t take place. That was the census of 1976 which was cancelled ostensibly on cost grounds. At the other end of the Eurasian landmass that year another census was also cancelled. This was in China where the census scheduled for 1975 and which had already been delayed by a year due to Mao Tse-tung’s illness, was then cancelled as a result of his incapacitation and then death. Chairman Mao had basically treated the previous Chinese censuses in 1953 and 1964 as private information gathering exercises. The results of the 1953 census had only being partially released while the 1964 census had been conducted and recorded entirely in secret. After Mao’s death the People’s Republic decided the postpone the census indefinitely until a computerised system could be installed in all the provinces. After which a new date was then set for 1982.

The census was one of the motivating forces in pre-electronic data processing by mechanical means. One of the places I worked had tallies on the key rings, and the ones I used to get from the gatehouse fairly regularly was tallied "Hollerith room". Well worth looking up Herman Hollerith. https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hollerith/

The primary funtion of modern censuses is to gather statistical information to aid government planning, but anyone who has an interest in family history will know how valuable a census is  for working out family trees (or rather it's the detailed door-to-door returns made by enumerators or individual householders that are so valuable). Although there were comprehensive censuses in 1801, 1811, 1821 and 1831, these did not record individual names. However the 1841 census of England, Wales, Isle of Man and Channel Islands (and for Scotland although strictly it was a separate census) conducted on the night of 6/7 June 1841 for the first time recorded the surname of the head of household plus the names of all persons who had spent the night there; their age, sex, occupation and where born.

* In the 1841 census the ages of people over 15 years old were usually rounded down to the nearest 5 years. For example, someone who was actually 24 years would have their age listed as 20, and someone who was actually 27 years old would have their age listed as 25.
** The "Where Born" column only asked two questions: (1) whether born in same county, and (2) whether born in Scotland, Ireland, or Foreign Parts.
*** Households were identified by the road/street name and a number or building name, however numbering of houses (ie for postal deliveries) was very rare at the time and the numbers recorded in the census were only to give a unique reference number somely for the purpose of the census.

All subsequent censuses (1851, 1861, 1871 etc) recorded the same, or indeed better, information. For example after 1851 the exact age in years was recorded (or in months for children under 1 year), and the place of birth was given more succinctly as a county or city (at least for those who'd been born in Great Britain).

The 1841 census also came at about the same time that compulsory registration of births, marriages and deaths was introduced in England and Wales, which came into operation from July 1837 (in Scotland an identical but separate system was introduced in 1855). There was inevitably some initial confusion and mistakes but generally the system was running reliably within a couple of years. Thus for anyone with some British ancestry, just by using the national registration system combined with census returns, it is generally a fairly straight forward matter to trace family back to the 1840s.

But to go back much before this involves a real sense of stepping off a cliff of certainty and into the unknown in terms of what documents are available. As one goes into the 18th century and then earlier still, one principally has to rely on parish records, recording baptisms, marriages and burials. These had been made compulsory by Henry VIII but over the centuries adherence to the law was not always consistent and the paper records in parish churches were subject to ravages of mice, mould and the foibles of individual churchmen. Parish records can be incredibly informative, sometimes even gossipy, but more often they are terse and taciturn, or indeed silent or just missing, and although they were supposed to be collated at a county/bishopric level (with annual Bishop's Transcripts) there was never a central national register. But enough of church records - here we're talking about censuses.

Like birth, marriage, death recods, the orginal entries for the censuses cannot usually be handled by ordinary researchers, but scanned copies of the original returns can be purchased so long as you have already found the page reference (or you can buy the whole thing as a DVD etc). A major problem however with the 1841 census in particular is that the original returns were all supposed to be written in pencil, rather than pen, which has often faded or become smudged and so is difficult to read. One usually also has to deal with a flamboyant "court-hand" style of handwriting. This has completely flummoxed me on occasion when tying to find my own ancestors, and I only finally found a missing GGGG-grandfather once I'd carefully traced the cursive flourishes of the completely miss-spelt surname, to eventually work out what was originally written in June 1841. Although in defense of that particular enumerator it cannot have been an easy task, standing on the doorstep of a crowded tenement in a dark narrow alley in central Newcastle-upon-Tyne, probably surrounded by a gaggle of nosy and truculent bare-foot urchins, while trying to interview suspicious tennants who likely spoke with a strong Geordie accent and who might not even know themselves how their name was spelled, and indeed who might even have been trying to hide the fact that they were sub-letting their rented rooms to another family or that their working children were not as under-age as they appeared to be.

The enumerators' entries for England, Wales and Scotland can be consulted for all censuses up to that of 1921, but none later due to the hundred year confidentiality rule, and the 1921 census has yet to be completely scanned for online use. However that will be almost all that's available for a couple of decades. The 1931 census for England and Wales was unfortunately almost completely destroyed by an accidental fire in December 1942 (although the 1931 census for Scotland, being stored in Edinburgh, was not affected) while because of the war no census was taken in 1941. However a quasi-census was taken in 1939 in preparation for civillian registration for identity papers, conscription and rationing, and this has already been made available to the public.

The situation in Ireland is greatly different. The census returns for 1841 and 1851 were destroyed in the fire at the Irish Public Records Office in 1922 at the start of the Civil War. The entries for the censuses of 1861 and 1871 were intentionally destroyed by the government shortly after the statistical information about the population and Irish society had been taken from them. Likewise the census returns for 1881 and 1891 were pulped during WW1, probably because of the shortage of paper. The individual returns for the censuses of Ireland of 1901 and 1911 do survive and are in the custody of the National Archives of Ireland, however because of the political situation no Irish census was taken in 1921.

The statistical reports for the Irish censuses were all published at the time and do exist. Some make stark reading. In 1841 the population of Ireland was recorded as being close to 8 million, but ten years later after the ravages of the Irish Potato Famine and associated emigration overseas, the 1851 census recorded a population of only 6.5 million, and it would continue to fall, down to just 4.5 million by the 1901 census. The preamble to the final report of the 1851 Irish census (written by the Registrar-General and addressed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) rather callously states:
"We feel it will be gratifying to your Excellency to find that the population has diminished in so remarkable a manner by famine, disease, and emigration ... The results of the Irish census of 1851 are, on the whole, satisfactory, demonstrating as they do the general advancement of the country."

MM, thank you for the information about censuses and especially about your anchestry research...

Here in Belgium the censuses started in 1846 (some 15 years after Belgium's existence). The worth of those censuses was mostly a socio-economic function. I have it only had once in my lifetime, I guess in 1991. Since 2011 there are no door to door enquêtes anymore. It is all done with the data that the "state" has in their computers (Oops, I wanted to use "ordinators" (ordinateurs)) about each of us...

Seeking about anchestry: for the "feast" of my sixty years I did the anchestry search on my father's line and further on the father of his side and the mother of his side...
I found out that especially on my grandfather's side there were a lot of accidents during the registration at the municipality...perhaps a bit emotional or drunk on the very occassion...and expecting some celebrity in the lineage I was bitterly disappointed...
Since end 18th century the name three times changed... Here in Belgium it was a rare name, but as you put "ricquier" in the search you had immeditely hundreds of names and in the North of France thousands...So I came finally to the conclusion that Saint Riquier had to be my forebear...
At my grandmother's side there were a lot of "intellectuals" and on my mother's patrilinear I found even bishops and clergy...

PS: and yes you saw, as in Ireland, also the impact in the censuses of the "potato famine" in the North of Belgium...

Beware of ancestral saints, Paul. A character in the Archers radio series, Walter Gabriel by name, claimed the Archangel must have been his ancestor (not sure if he had red hair as supporting evidence?**) but it turned out his ancestor was probably a foundling left on the steps of the church of that dedication.
**will only make sense to afficionados of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az6FfhyW3do

As St. Riquier was a hermit monk who'd taken vows of chastity and so died childless, I don't think he'd be anyone's ancestor.

Meles meles wrote:

As St. Riquier was a hermit monk who'd taken vows of chastity and so died childless, I don't think he'd be anyone's ancestor.

 
MM, you said "vows of chastity and so died childless" 
Hmm, those days...even the saints...with my dirty mind...

And it had a lot to do as ever in the Catholic Church with "politics"...
Look once up, Bertrada of Laon (Bertha with the "broad feet") and Angilbert...even Einhard...

Meles meles wrote:

The individual returns for the censuses of Ireland of 1901 and 1911 do survive and are in the custody of the National Archives of Ireland, however because of the political situation no Irish census was taken in 1921.

100 years on, the headlines last week regarding the publication of the results of the 2021 census in Northern Ireland tended to be about ‘Catholics outnumbering Protestants’:

Catholics outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time.

More significantly, perhaps, is the statistic showing 42% of the population of Northern Ireland now identifying as British in any way.