The Migration Patterns of Male Residents in Four Lincolnshire Settlements in 1851

Abstract

Migration in England and Wales during the nineteenth-century has been much studied in the past century. In the mid-1880s E.G. Ravenstein analysed the 1881 census reports relating to the migration of people from rural to urban environments and published his research in a paper entitled ‘the laws of migration’. This has been the basis for many migration research projects since that time. My article uses a microhistory case study of four small Lincolnshire settlements within close proximity from 1851 to 1901, and uses the census enumerators’ books, civil records of births, marriages and deaths, trade directories, and newspaper articles, to trace the migratory journeys of the males from those settlements. This research traced as many males as possible from the ‘base’ census of 1851 to subsequent censuses throughout the nineteenth century, therefore ensuring that the detail of migration when focused on very specific communities was not obscured by overarching generalised migration research countrywide. Ultimately, Lincolnshire is shown to be a county where circular migration, and relative immobility predominated, rather than step-migration of the sort traced by Ravenstein.