The 1901 Census in Bishop Burton
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Bishop Burton Census 1901 The 1901 Census in Bishop Burton An analysis by Bryn Jones based on three articles first published in the Bishop Burton News 2008 1 Introduction Every ten years since 1841 (except 1941 because of World War 2) the government has undertaken a census of the UK population. One hundred years later the detailed contents of the census are opened to public inspection and so are leapt on by family historians wanting to track their ancestors. All the UK census returns are now on computer and so it is possible to search for particular individuals using software you can subscribe to or access from the library. To help with the war memorial project, I have transcribed the 1901 census for Bishop Burton into a database on my computer. This then allows us to analyse the village population as a whole as well as see what individuals were up to. The census surveyed the population of the village on 31 st March 1901. Each registrar’s sub- district was divided into a number of enumeration districts, each of which was the responsibility of an enumerator. The enumerator delivered a form known as a schedule to each household a few days before census night, and collected the completed schedules the day after. The schedules were then sorted, and the details copied into the census enumerators’ books. It is these books which have survived and which can be seen today on microform or digitally online. There are 15 pages for the Bishop Burton enumeration district with roughly 30 entries per page. The enumerator for the village was Richard Hornsey who lived at Mill House. The information he collected was: name or address of house (sometimes), no. of rooms occupied, surname, forenames, sex, age, relation to head of household, marital status, occupation, whether they were an employer or a worker, whether they worked at home and the county and place of their birth. The last column records whether the person was (1) deaf and dumb, (2) blind, (3) a lunatic or (4) an imbecile or feeble-minded. No one fell into any of those categories, officially at least! 2 Population On the night of the census there were 415 people who “slept” in the village; the 212 males slightly outnumbered the 203 females. The graph shows the size of the village’s population between 1801 and 1971. 600 500 400 300 Population 200 100 0 1801 1821 1841 1861 1881 1901 1921 1951 1971 Our villagers lived in 90 households, an average of 4.6 persons per household; two houses were unoccupied. This compares to the 114 households there were in 1841 and the 119 to be found in 1961. The largest household was Raike’s Farm where 19 people lived. The reason for the large size of the farming households was that there were many servants (male and female) living-in, some sleeping in dormitory style accommodation. There were 77 servants living in other households in the village; 23 were female and were either housemaids or domestic servants; 54 were male and were mostly farm workers of some sort. Copyright © Bryn Jones 2008 Page 1 of 6 Bishop Burton Census 1901 3 Names Many households in the village shared surnames with more than one other household in the village. The most common surnames were Hayton(25), Berridge(15) and Waslin(13); there is now no one with any of those surnames living in the village. The largest family in the same household were the Collingwoods; they had eight children living at home with an age span of 2 months to 13 years. The most popular female and male first names in the village were: Sarah Charles Elizabeth John Anne George Mary William 0 5 10 15 20 0 10 20 30 The top 4 names for the 52 girls aged 10 or less were Mary, Anne, Edith and Lily, each with three occurrences. For the 45 boys in the village, the most popular first names were: Harold(4), John(4), Ernest(3) and Joseph(3). There were at least two people in the village that had names they shared with no one else in the country: Page Barrow, a gardener, and Blanch Alphonsine Quest, the wife of the publican of the Altisidora Inn, Tom Quest, who shared his name with just one other person in England. 4 Origins The census shows where the 415 villagers were born; as you can see almost half were born in Bishop Burton with 29 born in Beverley and 20 in Walkington. Only three people (plus one not declared) were born in the nearest village, Cherry Burton, slightly surprising since by 1901 almost 400 people lived there. Hull Leconfield Walkington Beverley ishop Burton 0 50 100 150 200 250 89% of the villagers were born in Yorkshire. The next most popular county was Lincolnshire; 16 people hailed from there. We had one “foreigner” in the village, Blanch Quest, the wife of the publican of the Altisidora who was born in France but was a British subject. Villagers did not always declare their true birth-places. The records for the Hawes family mention Holbeach in Lincolnshire as the place of birth for most of the family but previous returns correctly identify Norfolk, Etton, Thirsk and Cherry Burton as their places of birth. Most of those who were born out of the county were from “professional” families – schoolmasters and religious ministers; of the schoolmaster’s family, for example, the head, Benjamin Swann, was born in York, his wife and two of the children were born in the Isle of Man, and the family had a servant with the same name who had been born in Grimsby. What is more surprising is that of the ten shepherds in the village, only two were born here and three Copyright © Bryn Jones 2008 Page 2 of 6 Bishop Burton Census 1901 were born out of the county. Shepherds and ministers obviously had to look far and wide for their flocks! 5 Life span The census does not provide a basis for analysing life expectancy or morbidity, but I’ve been able to tap into some research that was carried out on the Waslin families who lived in the village. Francis and Rebecca Waslin had six children between 1893 and 1906; their ages on death were 14, 1, 78, 0, 75 and 74. John and Harriet Waslin had seven children between 1888 and 1909; their ages on death were 6, 70, 0, not known but >27, 1, 0 and 71. 6 Occupations Almost of the males in the village aged 14 or above had an occupation with the following exceptions: Mr Poole who was unfortunately paralyzed; Mr Simpson, a retired farmer; two other eighty year olds were living on their own means and two others were living in the almshouses. As you might expect the great majority of working men (110) were engaged in occupations based on the land – farmers (and their sons), agricultural labourers, gardeners, horsemen, carters, shepherds, beastmen, waggoners, hinds (foreman), gamekeepers. All the women who worked were in domestic service except for Miss Adeline Walker and Miss Ellie Skingle, both of whom were governesses and Miss Sarah Wilson who was a cow-keeper. Miss Walker was live-in governess to the two Pearman children at the vicarage, Dorothy and Margery. The youngest (official) workers were Laura and Agnes Batchelor both aged 14 and working as domestic servants at Raike’s farm and Callis farm. None of the married women had an “occupation” but I suppose that didn’t spare them from hard work. The village had one “parish pauper”, Madge Stather, a widow aged 75 years, who had been a shopkeeper in the village according to Bulmer’s Directory of 1892. If we exclude the farms and the Hall, four households had a single domestic servant and one, the vicarage, had two, a cook and a housemaid. On the farms, female servants were needed since many of the farm workers lived on the farm and received both board and lodging from the farm. Farm Family Family Child Male Female Tot. male female worker worker adult adult Raike’s 1 2 6 9 1 19 Cold Harbour 2 2 2 8 2 16 Killingwoldg’ve 2 3 3 4 2 14 Ling’s 1 2 0 5 2 10 Dalegate 2 3 4 1 0 10 Dalegate Farm run by the Elleringtons had the least number of live-in servants of any farm in the village; other farms not listed above had between 2 and 4 servants living-in. (The census labels this farm as Dalegate Farm but we believe this is incorrect and it should be Callis Farm. Dalegate is probably the farm that is now called Knights Garth). Young men who stayed in the village mostly followed their father’s occupations. Farmers’ sons became farmers; joiners’ sons were apprenticed as joiners and so on. The Whipp family that farmed Mount Pleasant provides a rather different path. James Whipp took the farm on the death of John Thompson. James’ first occupation had been as a hairdresser in Huddersfield; he then became a commission agent (turf) i.e. a bookmaker. Taking on Mount Pleasant Farm in the 1890’s must have seemed quite appropriate since it is adjacent to the race course that he must have had to visit regularly. There was another connection with the race-course in that his brother was a race horse trainer living in Willow Grove, Beverley. Copyright © Bryn Jones 2008 Page 3 of 6 Bishop Burton Census 1901 Of other occupations, most would have been focussed on providing services required within the village.