The History of 19th Century Ruddington from the Census
May 2004 Meeting Report
Guest Speaker - Val Clarke
Val Clarke is a member of the Ruddington Local History Society and was instrumental in setting up the project to transcribe all the details from the 1891 Census that related to Ruddington into a database for historical research by members of the Society and other interested parties. Val retired from work in the 1980’s and, having the luxury of some hitherto unknown leisure time, decided that the proposed project would be a worthwhile exercise. Needless to say this project involved a considerable amount of work. The computing technology of the day was vastly inferior to today’s home computers, miniscule memory and floppy discs being the order of the day, and this made the task somewhat more difficult than it probably would be today.
Initially the way in which the raw information from the Census was to be transcribed needed to be established. What information to collect, how to record, tabulate, store and check it were all problems, which needed to be resolved. Eventually a system of transcribing the Census details was decided upon and the work began. Approximately nineteen separate fields needed to be taken from the original Census records. These included such fields as: - District Number; Schedule Number; Address; Number of Rooms; Forename; Surname; Age; Relationship to Head of Household; Number of House; Number in Family; Status; Sex; Occupation; Job Code; Employed/Employee; Outwork; and Birthplace.
One problem, which was encountered at the outset of the exercise, concerned the manner in which the Census Supervisor had originally altered many of the Employment categories. Thus a groom would be deleted and coachman substituted. A Farm labourer would become a farm worker and so on. Some changes were quite subtle but others were not so. Should some license be taken with interpreting the changes or should they be taken as written down? These were problems, which were resolved on an ongoing basis.
When all of the information from the Census had been successfully recorded on floppy discs then it could begin to be analysed. This was the interesting part of the whole exercise and it did throw up some strange statistics. One of the first things, which caught the eye of the analysts, was the fact that over half of the population of Ruddington was under 20 years of age in 1891. The consensus of opinion being, to account for this anomaly, was that most of the younger adults left Ruddington to make their fortunes in the booming city of Nottingham.
The range of occupations highlighted by the results was also very interesting. Occupations as diverse as Artist & Butcher; Sailor & Parish Lamp Lighter; Professional Vocalist & Cycle Fitter; Sailor on a Man-of-War & Professional Cricketer; and Captain in the Church Army & Milliner being but a few of the examples. One group of workers, which were quite prominent, were the Railway Company employees. These numbered 33 individuals and their number had increased significantly since the previous Census illustrating how the railways were spreading to all parts of the Kingdom.
Another fact that became apparent was how the population of Ruddington remained largely unchanged throughout the entire Census from 1841 to 1891. The statistics also showed how the population was largely static. In the 1891 Census 1,564 of Ruddington’s 2,493 inhabitants were of local origin. However, apart from the usual smattering of Scots, Irish and Welsh there were 5 residents who hailed from the U.S.A. 1 from New Zealand and, surprisingly, 1 from Chile. It would have been interesting to know what the reason was for them being here.
All in all Val and her team had done a very thorough and worthwhile exercise in relation to Ruddington’s local history database.