Tarrant Crawford, Dorset
1861 Census

Contents

• Introduction
• Introduction to the 1861 census
• About this transcription
• The census "as enumerated"
• The surname index
• Demographic comment
• Browser compatibility statement
• Main links to other pages on this site

The columns shown on the enumeration schedules for this census are:

• No. of Householder's Schedule
• Name of Street, Place or Road and Name or No. of house
• Name and Surname of each Person who abode in the house on the Night of 7th April 1861
• Relation to Head of Family
• Condition
• Age of, subdivided into:
• Male
• Female
• Rank, Profession or Occupation
• Where Born
• Whether Blind, or Deaf-and-Dumb

Notes:

• The first column serves to give each household a numeric identity
• Condition means marital status. In this case, as in most, the options are:
• Mar = married
• U = unmarried
• Wid = widow or widower (these are sometimes given in full)
• [blank] = normally for children under about 15

Users should be aware that the quality of the records is sometimes poor, for a variety of reasons:

• The handwriting used is in some cases so poor as to be unintelligible.
• There are often marks on the original which obscure the writing. Ages are particularly prone to this problem, on this and other censuses.
• Most people at the time were illiterate, so the enumerator often wrote down what he heard, or thought he heard. This leads to many variations in spelling of names. For example, on this census the name "CHERRETT" (which was originally "GERRARD" in this case) is shown as "GERRET", while farmer Richard BRIAN in 1841 has become Richard BRINE here, as in 1851.
• The quality of filming the original records is vary variable, some being too faint to read. (Access is available only to the films, not the original paper records).
• The schedules which were retained and filmed were themselves transcribed by the enumerators from their own original records, and so are prone to transcription errors.
• Many people did not know for certain where or when they were born (no certificates), and others falsified their age, so ages and places of birth are unreliable for adults.

The presentation here consists of two parts, the surname index and the data "as enumerated".

The surname index shows each personal entry with the surname in block capitals, followed by the name exactly (or as near as the transcriber could interpret it) as on the original schedule. Clicking on the name leads to the corresponding entry in the transcription of the "as enumerated" part.

In most cases there is no street or house name or number, the "Whether Blind or Deaf-and-Dumb" column is always blank, and the "Rank, Profession or Occupation" column is blank for many people.

I have used the first level of indentation to group all the information for a household, with just the "No. of Householder's Schedule" column unindented. The second level of indentation shows the name of the house (if any) and the name of each person. The third level gives the information against each individual, one line per column on the original form, except that the transcriber omitted the distinction between male and female, which is clear in all cases from the given names. In other respects I believe the transcriber has endeavoured to keep the wording identical to that on the original schedule.

In addition to the personal information in the columns, the census record has an introductory paragraph explaining the area covered by the enumeration district, which I have included verbatim (as supplied by the transcriber). There is also a statistical summary, which I have included but have moved to the end to be consistent with the layout of my 1841 and 1851 census pages.

It is also interesting to note that of 44 adults living in the parish (defined as over 15), only 7 were born there, including two not yet 16 years old.

The population of the parish had remained static at 67 over the 10 year period between the 1851 and 1861 censuses, but the male population fell from 39 to 32 (adults from 23 to 19, children from 16 to 13) while the total female population also fell (from 38 to 35), but in this case the number of adults increased (from 22 to 25) but the number of female children dropped sharply from 16 to 10. The total number of houses had decreased from 16 to 15 (the same as in 1841), but with none uninhabited compared with one out of 16 in 1851 and two out of 15 in 1841.

The gross figures tend to hide a considerable changeover. Of the 15 families resident in 1851, only 6 were still there in 1861, and in two of those cases the head appears to have died, to be succeeded in one case (George Hunt) by his daughter and in the other (gamekeeper George Florence) by his widow. While some of the departures are no doubt the result of deaths, in most cases the whole family, including relatively young adults and children, has gone. Almost all the adult departures and arrivals were agricultural labourers or similar, while the higher social strata (farmer, blacksmith and deceased gamekeeper's family) all remained not only from 1851 but from 1841 (although most of the farmer's children had departed since 1851).