The 1911 Census

A transcript

By Neil Fortey

Introduction

This transcription has been prepared as an aide to local history studies of the parishes of Bottesford and Muston as they were in the year of the Coronation of George V and three years before the outbreak of the First World War.

The information is in two PDF files (see links at the bottom of this page), one for each of the two villages.

The notes which follow are intended to provide an explanation and a preliminary discussion of the information.


TO GO STRAIGHT TO THE COMPILED CENSUS, USE THE LINKS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE


The 1911 Census of Bottesford (including Normanton and Easthorpe) and Muston

In the 1911 Census, Bottesford and Muston formed District 1 within Grantham Registration District (No.417). They were divided into three sub-districts. Thus, Bottesford was enumerated in two sub-districts each with its own enumerator (sub-districts 1 and 2), while Muston was enumerated separately (as sub-district 4): I do not know where sub-district 3 was.

Bottesford Enumeration Sub-district 417-1-1 was dealt with by Mr John Winn, and consisted of “All that part of the Parish of Bottesford which includes houses the north side of the centre of the Nottingham Grantham main road including the Hamlet of Nomanton.

Bottesford Enumeration Sub-district 417-1-2 was dealt with by Mr Herbert W. Daybell, and consisted of “All that part of the Parish of Bottesford which includes houses the south side of the centre of the Grantham Road and the whole of the Hamlet of Easthorpe.

Muston Enumeration Sub-district 417-1-4 was dealt with by Mr Tom E. Lamon, and consisted of “Muston Civil & Ecclesiastical Parish from the Gap to the Rectory through the village on the right to Shipman’s house with houses both sides back to the river bridge and through the rest of the village. Calcraft’s house. House near Muston Gorse Covert. Down Skerry Lane to Debdale Farm and cottages. Cottage to W of Debdale.

This transcription was compiled as an Excel spreadsheet whose structure combines the two separate forms used in the actual census to contain personal details and address information. There are separate spreadsheets for Bottesford and Muston. That for Bottesford includes Easthorpe and Normanton.

An inevitable result of the way the spreadsheets have been constructed is that every person in a household is given a separate line, and the address information is repeated for each member of a household.

The names of the fields (columns) in the spreadsheets

Line No.               – this is a field that I have added simply to uniquely indicate each line in the spreadsheet, thus the first line is number 1, the second number 2, and so on.

Subd                     – this indicates the Enumeration Area Subdivision in the census. Bottesford was divided into two subdivisions on a geographical basis, each one having its own Enumeration Officer (see below). Muston consisted of one Enumeration area and was not sub-divided: hence this field is omitted from the Muston spreadsheet.

Schedule No.      – this is the number given to each household during the census. There are two features of this number that should be borne in mind. Firstly, some numbers are missing, which suggests that where this is found it means that a premises was given a number but proved to be uninhabited on the census night, so that its absence indicates a census null return (for example, Schedule No.1 in Subdivision 1 is missing). Secondly, in Bottesford each Enumeration sub-division had its own schedule, starting at number 1 (hence there is, for example, a Schedule No.2 in Enumeration Subdivision 1, and another Schedule No.2 in Enumeration Subdivision 2).

House No.           – this is the number of the house as recorded by the head of the household on the census form, and is thus part of the postal address. However, several houses lacked a number (or the number was not recorded at the time), and in these cases this field is left blank.

Address                – this records the street name or house name, as shown in the census.

Family Name      – this is the family name (surname) of the individual person.

Fore-name          – this is the fore name (one or more) of the individual

Relation               – this is used in the census to indicate who is who in the household. I have used abbreviations for most entries: ‘h’ – head of household; ‘w’ – wife; ‘s’ – son; ‘d’ – daughter; ‘gs’ – grandson; ‘gd’ – grand-daughter; other relationships are stated in full, such as mother, servant, boarded, etc.

Condition            – this records if the person is married, single or widowed. I have employed abbreviations here: ‘m’ – married; ‘m’ plus a number – married and the number of years married (the census required married women, but not married men, to indicate how long they had been married); ‘sgl’ – single; ‘w’ – widow or widower as appropriate. For children (generally those under 14) there is nothing in this field.

Sex                        – this gives either ‘m’ (male) or ‘f’ (female). It is probably not necessary to explicitly add this, but the census does require the information and so I have included it here.

Age                       – this is the person’s age in years as recorded in the census. Note that a new-born child is given an age of 0 and hence as being born in 1911. Without separate birth records it is not possible to confirm that this is in fact the case. Because the census was carried out at the end of March, it is probable that most children less than a year old would in fact have been born in 1910.

Born                     – this gives their birth year as calculated by subtracting their age from 1911.

Occupation         -              this records a person’s occupation as recorded in the census. I have recorded all school attendees as ‘scholar’ though this word is not generally used in the census.

Birthplace            – this records where the individual was born, and generally records a town/village and a county. I have not used capital letters or punctuation here to save time when transcribing the records, but I think it is easy to recognise which is which.

Discussion

By counting the lines of records, it is apparent that 1164 people were recorded in Bottesford, and 259 in Muston. In Bottesford, there were 191 premises in Sub-district 1 and 137 in Sub-district 2. Four schedule number are missing from Sub-district 1, but none from Sub-district 2. Thus, there appear to have been 324 households in Bottesford. In Muston there were 66 premises, but one schedule number is omitted, indicating 65 actual households. However, these numbers may not be totally correct, because there are cases where the Census Enumerator appears to have missed an address out, for instance in Sub-district 1 successive schedule numbers 55 and 56 refer to Nos.1 and 3 High Street respectively. What about No.2 High Street? It looks as if the Enumerator gave schedule numbers to some unoccupied premises but did not award schedule numbers to some other unoccupied premises. The result is rather confusing.

An important source of confusion arises where the location of the houses is concerned. Some of the street names are unfamiliar, and also seem to differ from those used in preceding censuses. There is moreover repetition of schedule numbers in the two sub-districts, and also examples where the same address is used in both. The latter situation crops up when we look at Bottesford High Street. For example, there is a No.1 High Street, occupied by James and Frances Moore, in Sub-district 1 Schedule no.55, and there is another No.1 High Street, occupied by James and Florence Dawson and their family, in Sub-district 2 Schedule No.76. Clearly, these are houses on opposite sides of the High Street, but it is not clear why they should both claim to be No.1 High Street. I do not know what the explanation for this anomaly is.

There is much more to be deduced from the census, but that must wait for the moment.

Note that the tables are in pdf files, so you need Adobe Reader or Acrobat to look at them. When you want to return to this text, you must click the return key (the left-pointing arrow at the top left corner of the screen).

Links to the Tables

Downloads
This page was added on 18/01/2013.

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