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This
paper will explain how to access the schedules of the 1851 Religious
Census in the Public Record Office at Kew. It will also describe the
original tabulations made by Horace Mann. The main part of the paper will
illustrate the three types of schedules issued to the churches. Using
actual examples, it will show what information was gathered and suggest
how community historians might use these statistics. It will point out the
problems and pitfalls as well as the possibilities and potential of such
work.
In the 2001
census schedule was a question on religion. It was the first time in 200
years of census taking in England, Wales and Scotland that such a question
had been asked, although it has been included in the Irish census since
1861. However in 1851 there was a separate Census of Religious Worship
taken on Sunday 30 March. It was a census of Places of Worship rather than
of Worshippers. However community historians will find it a unique and
still under-used source of information on church buildings and church
attendance across main land Britain. It is available at the Public Record
Office, Kew, class HO 129 as self-service microfilms. To find the right
film you need to know the piece number. These are the numbers of the
registration districts in the general census of the same year. There’s a
look up list on the shelves in the reference room.
Within registration districts the parishes are in the
same order as in the general census. Within each parish the schedule from
the Anglican parish church has usually been filmed first, followed by the
non- conformist schedules, ending with the Quaker schedule, if there is
one. If the film you need is missing, you will be allowed to request the
originals. These come as bundles of foolscap sheets printed on both sides,
one side for instructions the other the schedule itself. Items of
correspondence from the people completing the schedules have also been
preserved.
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The schedules for the
established church were on pale blue paper, printed in black ink,
portrait style.
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The schedules for
non-conformist churches were on pale blue paper, printed in red ink,
landscape style.
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The schedules for the
Society of Friends were on white paper, printed in black ink,
landscape style.
The advantage of microfilm
over the originals is that you can take photocopies yourself. Copies are
currently 25p each but if you are doing lots it’s worth buying a
rechargeable copy card. Copies are printed on A3 paper making it easier to
read small print or faded ink on the original. Have all the returns
survived? Unfortunately no, Bristol and Halifax are missing. For those
areas you will need to resort to the original tabulations compiled by
Horace Mann, of which more later. Were all places of worship and
congregations in a registration district enumerated? Probably not.
While it was relatively easy to identify the
ancient parish churches, it was much more difficult for enumerators to
locate every single dissenting congregation. Did all clergymen and lay
church officials complete the schedules? No. In 3 of the 18 parishes I’ve
studied the returns for the Anglican churches were completed by the
registrar. Some clergy opposed the census. Were the remaining schedules
completed correctly and in full? You must be joking!
Are there lots of additional remarks? Yes, and that’s what
makes it so fascinating. What information was required? This was different
on each of the 3 schedules. Let’s take the one for the ‘Churches and
Chapels belonging to the United Church of England and Ireland’ as an
example.
It asked for the name and
description of the church or chapel. Details of where situated. The next
line of boxes asked when and under what circumstances the church was
consecrated or licensed. In the expanding urban areas there were newly
licensed chapels, and those consecrated or licensed since 1 Jan 1800 were
required to provide details of how and by whom erected and how the cost
was defrayed, e.g.
Holy Trinity,
Gainsborough, Lincolnshire
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consecrated 29 June
1843 as an additional church,
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erected by voluntary
subscription, aided by grants from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners
and the Church Building SOC.,
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cost defrayed by grants
£1,100, by private benefactors and subscriptions £3,000,
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total cost about
£4,100,
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endowed with voluntary
subscriptions £ 1,000, fees about £ 15,
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grant from
Ecclesiastical Commissioners about £47 pa, private benefactors £450,
Queen Anne’s Bounty £400.
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The pews are let at a
low rent and do not much exceed the demands for repair fund, salary of
clerk, sexton, pew opener and other expenses of conducting the
services.
All were asked to
provide details of their endowment, though many supplied merely a total
figure rather than itemised amounts. In fact it had been decided after
the forms were printed that this information was not required.
The next box asked for the space available for public
worship, by which on this schedule it actually meant the seating
accommodation, free or otherwise. These vary in the 18 parishes I’ve
examined from 100% free to only 6% free. The proportion of the parish that
could have been seated using both free and other sittings varied from 66%
to 10%.
Then come the boxes over which there was most controversy,
both at the time and since. The Estimated Number of Persons attending
Divine Service, with columns for morning, afternoon and evening, and rows
for ‘General Congregation’ and ‘Sunday Scholars’. This is the
point at which you discover that many clergy could not add up. Only 15% of
churches had 3 services that Sunday. Note that only an estimate was
required and there is certainly evidence of rounding, though some clergy
appear to have supplied exact figures. Others are known to have estimated,
as the form is signed and dated before 30 March.
The second box on this line asks for the average number of
attendants in the same 2 rows and 3 columns over the preceding 12 calendar
months, or less if the church was newly consecrated. What did they mean by
average? Few churchwardens had kept detailed attendance records so there
was no way of calculating the arithmetic mean or even a reliable median.
What they gave was the mode, but many left the boxes blank, others
repeated the estimated figures from the previous box. If there was a
substantial discrepancy between the 2 boxes they usually accounted for it
in the remarks box at the bottom. It was Mothering Sunday, which in
subsequent Parliamentary debate was claimed to have distorted the
attendances. However in none of the parishes I examined was this
mentioned. What you cannot do with certainty is to translate these
attendances into people, because you don’t know how many people only
attended one service a Sunday and how many people attended twice or even 3
times. If you assume everyone only attended once you probably
over-estimate the proportion of the population who were church- goers, but
if you take only the figures for the best attended service in the day, or
the mean of the attendances at the two or more services, you probably
under-estimate the proportion of the population who were churchgoers.
The schedules for
non-conformist churches again asked for the name and location of the
church. In this case a hamlet or street address was often given. Column
lll asked for the denomination. The 18 parishes I’ve studied yielded 63
chapels. This certainly illustrates the title of the 2002 conference, ‘By
schisms rent asunder’.
Column IV required the date when the building was erected.
There were 4 in the 17th century, 7 in the 18th century, 23 between 1800
and 1837, and 4 within the last 12 months.
Columns V and VI asked whether the building was separate and
entire and whether it was used exclusively as a place of worship. Most
(56) replied in the affirmative, but there were a few exceptions. Their
question on space available for public worship also had the category ‘Free
space or standing room’ in addition to the free sittings and other
sittings. Many (50) left this blank but for 2 chapels it represented half
their accommodation!
In ‘The myth of the empty church’ Robin Gill claims that
denominations went on building chapels long after the accommodation
exceeded the local population. However in many cases they were not
catering merely for the local population, The less common denominations,
might be drawing their congregations from a wide geographic area.
Occasionally the claims for accommodation are extravagant, given the size
of the surviving building.
Attendances, both estimated on 30 March and averaged over 12
months, caused the non- conformists as many problems as the Anglicans.
Again there is evidence of inability to add up and of rounding. Sometimes
the reported attendance exceeds the claimed accommodation. On other
occasions they are pitifully small. The distribution of Sunday scholars
would be a study in itself. Some chapels held several services on a
Sunday, others held only one and there is evidence of different
denominations holding their service at different times of day, as if
deliberately not to clash. Maybe they were not quite so ‘rent asunder’
as they appear. It would often have been possible in the towns and larger
villages to attend services at 3 different denominations in a day if one
wished.
The remarks column makes clear that there was co-operation,
or at least friendly rivalry rather than the hostility we often suppose.
Who signed the non-conformist returns is also a subject for study, they
were signed by the Minister, by stewards of various descriptions, by
Deacons, Elders, class leaders, lay preachers, a secretary, one by someone
styling himself ‘leader and manager’ and another by someone styling
himself ‘owner’. Although occupation was not required there was a boot
maker, a carpenter, a gardener, a grocer and a saddler, but with so many
not giving occupations this may not be representative.
Only 3 of the 18 parishes I studied had Roman Catholic
congregations but that is probably due to the geographic location of the
parishes. A selection of urban parishes would have yielded far more.
Finally the schedules for the Society of Friends: these did
not ask for the name of the meeting house and as they were separate
schedules did not need a column for denomination. They did ask for when
erected, whether separate and entire building and whether used exclusively
as a place of worship. As well as asking for seating accommodation they
asked for the measurement in ‘superficial feet’ of the space available
for public worship both of the ground floor and any galleries.
What do you do if you can’t
get to Kew? Contact your county record office or local studies library and
see whether they have got copies of the microfilms for the registration
districts in their area. Failing that find out whether anyone has
published a transcription of the returns. A bibliography by Clive Field
was published in the Local Historian in 1997. The original tabulations on
the census returns were edited by Horace Mann and published in 1854. They
were re-printed by the Irish University Press in 1970 as volume 10 of
their series of British Parliamentary Papers. Neither of these publication
are easy to track down using on-line catalogues. The British Library has
them. They don’t appear in the Cambridge Interim pre 1978 catalogue
on-line but in fact they have 2 copies of the 1854 edition among the rare
books. However, they don’t give anywhere near the amount of detail as
the schedules. The first 17 pages (about a third of the book) form the
narrative report. The central section of the volume consist of 14 tables,
usually presented by county. The final section of the volume presents
figures by registration district or Poor Law Union. There have been
objections to the figures being published a parish level because this
might lead to 'individual comparisons’. So registration district is the
closest you’ll get.
So for people researching
Bristol and Halifax this may be the best you can do, but for everywhere
else it’s well worth tracking down the original returns or a published
transcript, because they arc so much richer than the official version, and
can throw a lot of light on the history of your community.
FACHRS members may
access a list of known transcripts from within the Members Community
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© FACHRS 2002 -
3 - Intellectual Property Christine Jones
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