Guardian - Census In Pictures

[scooter]

Hands up who wants an 1881 table mat?

http://tinyurl.com/clk4ao2

[Currie]

Thanks Scooter, that was very interesting.

The table mat would be handy and would obviate the need to bring a book to the table. I wonder if they make a smaller version, I don’t often eat at a table.

Before that one there’s an engraving, or something, of some agricultural gentlemen and it looks as if the printer had accidentally put his fingerprint on the top corner and disguised it as a tree so he wouldn’t get into trouble. Or maybe it was just his quick way of drawing a tree.

And there’s lots of interesting things in old magazines like Punch, especially old jokes. I’ve added some more census comment from Punch hereunder. Unfortunately their proposal wasn’t adopted.


Glasgow Herald, Thursday, August 4, 1870.
THE CENSUS,
It appears to Mr. Punch that an excellent opportunity of obtaining a large mass of valuable statistical facts, bearing on the prosperity and national resources of the country, is likely to be lost for another ten years; and he, therefore, suggests to the House of Lords the propriety of their introducing into the bill, when it comes before them, some such list of questions as the following, the answers to which would prove far more interesting than mere commonplace everyday details of name, age, sex, profession, or occupation, relation to head of family, &c. :—

1. Are you engaged?
2. What toothpowder do you use?
3. Does your mother-in-law reside under your roof; and do you find this arrangement conducive to domestic happiness?
4. Do you keep Christmas?
5. Are you on friendly terms with your wife's relations? State the number of meals they have taken in your house during the last three weeks.
6, How many false teeth have you?
7. Are you homeopath, allopath, hydropath, thermopath, or Turco-bath?
8. Which of the many kinds of cocoa do you prefer?
9. What allowance do you make your wife; and does she make it do?
10. Do you wash by the piece or the year?
11. How often in the week last preceding the 2d of April, 1871, had you cold meat for dinner?
12. What number of servants do you keep; and how many times have you changed them during the last three months? What are your arrangements with them as to tea, sugar, beer, their own washing, and the area-gate? Do you allow followers?
13. Are you troubled with black beetles; and what have you found to be the most efficacious means of destroying them?
14. How many poor relations have you?
15. What cough lozenges do you employ?
16. Were you married by banns or license? How many bridesmaids added to the expense? What was the duration of your courtship? Where did you spend your honeymoon; and how long did it last?
17. Do you take snuff?
18. Is the hair you wear all your own? (This question is not compulsory on ladies.)
19. Which daily paper do you read?
20. Do you belong to the Civil Service Supply Association?
21. Have you any expectations from wealthy relatives?
22. Do you wear screwed boots?
23. Do you suffer from indigestion?
24. Are you a smoker; and which do you prefer, a pipe or a cigar?
25. Are you High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, Narrow Church, Fast Church, Slow Church, or No Church?
26. Have you ever visited Sir John Soane's Museum?
27. Do you take sugar in your tea?
28. Do you take Punch?


All the best,
Alan

[StewL]

Much more interesting than the standard census form Alan =D>

[Currie]

I’ve had this article lying around for a while and I may as well tack it on here. It’s from the Aberdeen Weekly Journal, Friday, April 3, 1891.

SOME CENSUS CURIOUSITIES.— Some amusing curiosities are collected in an article in the "National Review," on "The Censuses of the Century." "It is said that the Duke of Wellington, then eighty-two years of age, returned himself as deaf; a touching trait of his truthfulness, though, of course, deafness, as an infirmity of old age, did not come within the scope of census inquiries." On the other hand, "a clergyman refused to return the schedule to the parish clerk, who was the enumerator, and sent it direct to the central office, alleging that if he had done otherwise his wife's age would have become a topic of gossip in the beershops of the village." "In Devonshire a middle-aged man refused to make out his schedule, saying that he did not know either his name or his place of birth, 'and he would not perjure himself by making a false entry.' An 'author' added to his return a note, stating that his wife said he was 'both idiot and lunatic.'"

"In the matter of the ages of the people, the most curious fact noticed in the report for 1881 is that there are more girls aged from 20 to 25 than can be accounted for. Young women of 25 at one census must have been 15 at the previous one. We must allow for death having thinned their ranks, and yet the girls of 25 are far more numerous than were the girls of 15, of whom they are the remainder. Among the girls of the working classes (so called) there is a desire to be over 20 in order to obtain better situations in domestic service; and in the classes above there in an even stronger desire to remain below 25, which is somehow, looked on as a sort of limit of the most marriageable age. Such amiable weaknesses on the part of the fair sex must be pardoned even by the Registrar-General."

Alan