1851 census of England and Wales

The moral from this exercise is to always check the documents and not to trust the transcriptions.

A detailed survey was made of the 1851 census for England and Wales using search results from Ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk. This census was chosen as being the first with the place of birth to be given as well as actual ages (in 1841 some ages were rounded to the nearest 5 years). The names and the number of reported occurrences were Allis (204), Alliss (54), Alless (6), Alles (101), Allice (52), and Alice (204) giving in total 621.

Each of the census images was then viewed to check that the name was correctly recorded and this showed many transcription errors. Some were clearly wrong while many were subtle and quite understandable with the poor handwriting of some enumerators. Some names which were difficult to determine were found and compared in the 1861 census which was sometimes clearer and allowed some people to be accepted or rejected. 

Common errors were reading “Allen” as Alliss or in the case of “Alice” it was to interpret a second Christian name of Alice as a surname. There are probably a few mis-transcribed or mis-indexed Allis names that were not seen and hence are missing from this survey.

The names and counts were as follows:

Ales 13      

Alace 1

Alice 32    

Alies 3

Alis 1        

Alise 1

Aliss 8      

Alles 1

Allice 8    

Allies 1

Allis 148  

Alliss 68

Giving an actual total for England and Wales of 285 persons.

The 285 persons splits into 63 couples or family groups and 71 individuals.

The individuals may be further grouped roughly as follows:

1 in prison

1 in a workhouse

2 in the army

9 widows/widowers or living alone

10 were visitors

19 were lodgers

29 were servants at their place of employment

The spread over the country is quite wide and the numbers listed by county of residence are shown below.

Cheshire 1                     

Derbyshire 10

Devon 3                         

Durham 2

Essex 19                        

Glamorgan 3

Gloucestershire 16         

Hampshire 1

Kent 21                          

Lancashire 14

Lincolnshire 99             

Middlesex 17

Monmouthshire 2          

Norfolk 5

Northamptonshire 1      

Northumberland 1

Nottinghamshire 6        

Shropshire 1

Somerset 14                  

Staffordshire 3

Suffolk 1                       

Surrey 19

Sussex 2                       

Warwickshire 2

Yorkshire 19                

Wiltshire 1

Worcestershire 2

Of these, four were born in Ireland and one in Scotland.

The Northumberland families originated from Nettleham, Lincolnshire as did some, but not all, of the Yorkshire members. The remainder of the Yorkshire families originated from the Tewkesbury Allis family. It is also believed that the family members in Nottinghamshire can be traced back to Nettleham.

This pattern is also seen in much earlier documents where although there are two or three main groups, there is also a random spread of small family groups in a wide geographical area.

The age ranges in the 1851 census are seen to be:

0-9       66

10-19   45

20-29   67

30-39   38

40-49   17

50-59   18

60-69   22

70-79   10

80-89   2