In 1590, William Cecil (1520-1598), Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I, proposed the establishment of the first General Register Office. Here information on the populace would be gathered, including the number of christenings, weddings, burials every year in England and Wales and how many were born by gender. Unfortunately, the Archbishop of Canterbury did not warm to the idea and Cecil died six years later. It was to take 210 years before such a notion approximating Cecil's met favour.
In June 1800 a recently launched venture, The Commercial, Agricultural and Manufacturers Magazine, featured a short essay. Its title was 'Thoughts on the Utility and Facility of Ascertaining the Population of England.' Its author (and new employee of the publication) was a certain John Rickman. He had originally penned his piece in 1796, but made amendments on deciding to publish - his changes prompted by the 1798 publication of An Essay on the Principle of Population by another English polymath Thomas Malthus.
John Rickman (1771-1840) by Samuel Lane, c.1831 (Palace of Westminster Collection)
Rickman was a friend of the poet Charles Lamb, who described him as 'a fine, rattling fellow...hugely literate, oppressively full of information...A new class. An exotic,...The clearheadest fellow. Fullest of matter, with least verbosity.'
Rickman, the son of village reverend, was aged only 29 when he published his take on a national census. At the time there existed disagreement between demographers over whether the population was unsustainably growing or in dire decline. Rickman listed 20 points in favour of ascertaining 'What is that population?' Amongst his themes were potential military capability, food demand, and informed government and legislation.
The method he initially propounded was certainly novel. He suggested that every parish minister return a letter detailing the 'births, burials and marriages for the past ten years; distinguishing male and female,...'. Having calculated an average ratio of births to deaths one would then utilize the current population of three or four parishes to 'ascertain by a simple arithmetical operation, the population of the whole nation'. He estimated it would take two years and cost only £740. He proposed it be a one-off or as required headcount, much like some other European nations.
Rickman's thoughts reverberated with George Rose, a Member of Parliament and Chief Clerk of the House of Lords. Rose, a Scottish economist, was then much concerned with poor grain supply (and its regulation) following that year's poor harvest. He seized upon Rickman's words: 'No society can confidently pretend to provide the requisite quantity of food, till they know the number of consumers' and that in a census 'The influence of the price of provisions in different years...would all be ascertained with tolerable precision.'
Rose recommended the essay and its author to Charles Abbot, a fellow Tory reformer. He soon contacted Rufus King, the American minister to Great Britain. The reason being that the US had already conducted two Federal censuses, one in 1890 and another that very year, 1800. Price consequently asked for details on how it had been undertaken. He then informed the prime minister, William Pitt, and the Speaker of the House of Commons of his intention 'to move for a Bill to ascertain the population of Great Britain.'
Abbot pleaded the case with Pitt in person, emphasising its utility at a time of war and food shortage. He also made the point that it should be regularly repeated. On 27 December 1800, after sailing through the lower house, the Population Bill won the approval of the House of Lords - only six months after John Rickman's short, but transformative, essay.
Scotland was nearly excluded from the first census when clergy petitioned against it; not considering it their duty to count their parishioners. Ultimately the role was largely performed by schoolteachers. Ireland, which formally became part of the United Kingdom on 1 January 1801, was not included until 1821.
On the last day of 1800 'An Act for taking an Account of the Population of Great Britain, and on the Increase or Diminution thereof' received the assent of King George III and passed in to law.
Rickman was offered the position of overseer. He wrote to his poet friend, Robert Southey: 'It is a task of national benefit, and I shall be fanciful to reject it, because offered by [Tory Establishment] rogues.' The government gave him an office and some clerks and they set about preparing for the first British national census. His base was a the Cockpit by St James's Park in Westminster, originally a Tudor leisure complex.
He supervised the first four censuses, those of 1801, 1811, 1821 and 1831. Sadly, they were destroyed by government order in 1904, meaning only the abstracts of returns and Rickman's general reports remain. His 1801 summaries and abstracts reached almost 600 pages.
The census of 10 March 1801 concluded that the the population of England, Scotland and Wales was 10,901,236 (8,331,434 in England, 1,559,068 in Scotland, 541,546 in Wales). Members of the armed services and merchant navy were excluded as their number was known through regimental and naval musters, namely 469,188.
Within months of the results, Rickman's 'Account of the Population' was being referred to as a census, from the Latin word 'censere' - to assess.
In addition to supervision of the censuses, which was not then a full-time post, Rickman became private secretary to his sponsor, Charles Abbot, then Speaker's Secretary and later Clerk Assistant at the Table of the House of Commons. He died in 1840, less than a year prior to the 'first modern census' of 1841.
(939)
Create Your Own Website With Webador