On 27 March 2011 the UK will conduct the latest (perhaps the last) in a series of censuses stretching back to 1801. People tend to remember the problems with recent censuses. The million or so people thought to have avoided the 1991 census, worrying that the census would be cross-referenced with the poll tax register, or the 404,179 Jedis in Britain in the 2001 census (Northern Ireland appear to have lumped their Jedis in with ‘Other religions and philosophies’). Nothing changes. In 1831, J. B. Bruce of Duffryn Aberdare, the stipendiary magistrate for Merthyr Tydfil, was pretty scathing about the 1821 census in a letter to the marquis of Bute (NLW, Bute L 74/15)
Duffryn Aberdare
March 9, 1831
My dear Lord Bute,
The census of 1821 was scandalously taken at Merthyr by a drunken Clerk of the Friendly Societies. It is well known that whole families forbid & concealed themselves fancying a Militia drawing.
His acc’t of £10 houses was 264, which the very Rate Book in that yeare w’d have shewn him (had he taken the trouble to inspect it) to be 373!
The census has been accurately taken this week, having been divided into Districts for that purpose, & has been sworn before me this day to be 26,350 in the parish of Merthyr alone, and there are 2000 not included in this census, in a suburb of Merthyr called Coed-y-Cummar, parish of Vainor, County of Brecon, all of whom work in the Cyfarthfa works being only separated from them by the Taff. The Vestry Clerk has also sworn to 683 houses rated at £10 & upw’ds, not including 71 at the afores’d suburb…
Stephen Benham