JISC

Landmark resource gives ‘vivid and extraordinary’ picture of 19th century Britain’s population

A major new resource which makes freely available for the first time all British census reports from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was launched in London today. The Online Historical Populations Reports project’s website gives an extraordinary picture of Britain’s changing population from 1800 up to the Second World War, making available almost 200,000 pages of digitised reports and data.  

Made available by AHDS History at the University of Essex and through JISC’s digitisation programme, the new resource also contains Registrar-General’s reports of the period, thousands of pages of documents relating to the administration of the census, specially commissioned essays giving the context of included materials and the complete texts of relevant legislation.

As a rich and accurate picture of a period of immense change and upheaval in British history, the resource also contains vivid examples of some of the prejudices and stereotypes then held among the population. For example, traces of anti-Catholic bigotry can be detected in remarks about occupational mortality in the Registrar-General’s report of 1875: ‘The mortality of catholic priests after the age of 55 is high; perhaps the effects of celibacy are then felt.’

Class distinctions were reinforced by the report of 1851 which spoke of ‘young children drink[ing] scalding w'This resource provides a rich and compelling picture of a period of great change in British history'ater out of the spout of the tea kettle, or fall[ing] into scalding water. This often happens in the lower classes…’, while an example of over-zealous reporting of ‘accidents and diseases to the eye’ is provided by an Irish census report of 1851 which includes details of ‘the colour of eye’ affected.  

The resource has advanced functionality, including searching by date and geographical area, zooming, rotation of pages and the ability to download statistics into spreadsheet format. 

Matthew Woollard, project director at AHDS History at the UK Data Archive at Essex, said: ‘ The Online Historical Population Reports (OHPR) histpop website will providean extremely valuable tool for learning, teaching and research and is yet another milestone in the growth of vital historical documents which are now freely available online. Although focused heavily upon historical census data the design and functionality of the histpop website is equally applicable to dissemination of other analogous material. I am confident that historians, demographers and others will find histpop an essential tool for their analysis and research.’  

Catherine Grout, JISC’s programme director, e-content, said:  ‘This resource provides a rich and compelling picture of a period of great change in British history and will be of enormous interest to lecturers, teachers, students and researchers in a wide range of subject areas. JISC is delighted to have supported the development of a resource which has not only delivered such important materials but which complements so well other primary research resources being created by the JISC Digitisation programme.’

Online Historical Population Reports is part of an overall programme amounting to a total investment of £10m in the digitisation of high-quality online content, including sound, moving pictures, newspapers, census data, journals and parliamentary papers for long-term use by the further and higher education communities in the UK.

For further information, please go to: www.histpop.org 

                                                        www.jisc.ac.uk/digitisation_home

  Contact: Matthew Woollard (UKDA) on 01206 873704 or matthew@essex.ac.uk

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