How well did the nineteenth century census record women's ‘regular’ employment in England and Wales? A case study of Hertfordshire in 1851

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to test the commonly made, but not well evidenced, assertion that the English and Welsh census data relating women's work is largely unreliable. This paper explores the hypothesis that when women were ‘regularly employed’ their occupations were fully enumerated in the 1851 census. There is considerable evidence to suggest that women's part-time, seasonal and casual work was not always recorded in the nineteenth century censuses. Rather than being seen as evidence of inaccuracy, it is argued here that these omissions indicate that householders were following the census instructions. In the years 1851–1881, these instructions requested that only the occupations of women who were ‘regularly employed’ be recorded. Comparing the listings of a mid-nineteenth century trade directory of Hertfordshire with the Census Enumerator's Books (CEBs) for the same county, this paper presents the results of new empirical research, and a method which provides a means to test systematically the recording of occupations of women who appear to be ‘regularly employed’. The key finding of this research is that, of the women who could be found in the CEBs, over 95% were recorded with an occupational descriptor. This suggests that the apparent unreliability of the census enumeration of women's work in the census of England and Wales may have been overstated.