Official Census Facts
I’M AN ARTIFICAL EYE MAKER AND FOLLOWER OF THE
JEDI RELIGION
Following our efforts in March, many will have been cheered by the news that the Government is exploring ways to gather information other than by census. Throughout history censuses have been unpopular, often because, as in the case of William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book in 1086, they have been used by governments to aid with the collection of taxes. Objections often relate to the right to privacy or suspicion of the Government’s motives. For many it is simply an onerous task even though it can now be done online. The modern census has been used in the UK since 1801 although evidence suggests that the idea goes back at least to the Babylonian Empire of 3,800 BC, when livestock and quantities of butter, honey, milk, wool and vegetables were counted. Unpopular or not, filling in your census form is not a matter of choice. Under section 8 of the Census Act 1920 people can be fined for a failure to complete census forms in line with the regulations. Exceptions exist for refusing or neglecting to respond to questions about religion, as stipulated by the Census (Amendment) Act 2000.
The law has not prevented some people attempting to avoid completing forms or using the opportunity to make their point. In 1841, artist JMW Turner rowed a boat into the Thames so he could not be counted as being present at any property. The famous suffragette campaigner Emily Davison saw the publicity value afforded by the 1911 census. Emily hid in a cupboard in Parliament on census night and had her address recorded as the House of Commons. Sadly she was killed when she stepped in front of the King’s horse in a protest at the Epsom Derby in 1913.
Census questions tend to reflect the time they are taken and the kind of information required. The UK census seems to have become more intrusive as time has passed. Many objected when the 1841 census became the first to record names, alongside age, gender, occupation and birthplace. The 1871 census asked whether anyone was blind, deaf and dumb, an imbecile, an idiot, or a lunatic. When the British carried out a census in India in 1871, people were reluctant to participate because of rumours that the goal of the count was to identify girls to be sent to England to fan Queen Victoria. The British officials wrestled with an inappropriate standard list, which made it difficult to classify such occupations in India as jokers and story-tellers, hail averters and prayer mutterers. In the UK that year, professions with the lowest counts included one bee dealer, 19 peg makers and 9 artificial eye-makers.
Officials in the UK have often been challenged by responses on household occupations. In 1911 a family from Birkenhead included a tom cat, listed as a mouse-catcher and a family from Dulwich included Roger, their watchdog. In the same year there were questions on medical ailments. In this section, John Underwood from Hastings described his children as, ‘quarrelsome’, ‘stubborn’, ‘greedy’ and ‘noisy’, himself as ‘bad-tempered’ and his wife as suffering from a ‘long tongue’.
From 1951 until 1991, households were asked if they had an outside toilet. References to “housewife” for example, were seen in the 1971 and 1981 census but by the 1990s the term had been replaced with the gender-neutral option “looking after the home or family”. Religious belief was included in the census for the first time in 150 years in 2001. Beforehand an email campaign tried to persuade people to record their religion as Jedi and 390,000 people declared that they had adopted the Star Wars religion. Ten years later, the number of Jedi believers had fallen somewhat – but at 176,632, it was the UK’s seventh most popular “religion”.