Census Dates

Below are listed the dates of all of the UK censuses, with a summary of the questions asked. Each census took place on a Sunday-Monday and the information recorded should relate to the midnight between those two days. Clicking on the year will take you to the National Records of Scotland website entry for that year, where more details (including street indexes and lists of enumeration districts) can be found.

Year	Date Census Taken	Place	Name	Relationship to head of household	Marital Status	Age & Gender	Occupation	Employed or Employer or Working on own account	Rooms with one or more windows	Whether Blind, Deaf or Dumb	Whether Imbecile or Lunatic	Where born	Whether Gaelic or speaker of Gaelic and English
1841	6th-7th June											***
1851	30th-31st March
1861	7th-8th April
1871	2nd-3rd April
1881	3rd-4th April
1891	5th-6th April
1901	31st Mar - 1st April
1911	2nd-3rd April

*** Only gives whether born in the county, England, Ireland, Scotland or foreign parts.

The 1841 census enumerators were instructed to round down the ages of people over the age of 15 to the nearest multiple of five. So a person aged 64, for example, was enumerated as 60.

One house might contain several families and they are distinguished by a mark between each one.

A public institution such as a hospital or poor house was considered as one household.

Those who were not in a house such as those who slept e.g. outdoors, in a tent, or in a cave are recorded at the end of the enumerator’s book.

Not all information in the Census can be taken as accurate. People may have deliberately lied about their ages, relationships etc. Entries are also subject to human error, both on the part of the enumerator and of the person providing the information.

The householder may have been illiterate therefore spelling of names can vary as the enumerator would have written the names as he thought they should be.