The population census is nowadays a taken for granted element of national social statistics. But the 1801 Census was undertaken only after a debate that had run for fifty years. The controversy consisted primarily of a debate on whether the population of England and Wales was declining or increasing, but ran into a debate on the political dangers of conducting, and publishing, such a detailed account of the whole population (Glass, 1973). Despite precedents elsewhere in Europe, the first bill to propose a census was unsuccessful in 1753, and it was not until 1800 that Parliament authorised such a major survey. The 1801 Census was the first national survey of the socio-economic characteristics of the population and preceded the surveys of Booth and Rowntree by almost a century.

The development of the British census

The earliest censuses (1801–31) took the form of simple head-counts, with the census enumerator responsible for recording the number of people and families at each address by sex and family occupation. Self-completion forms were first issued to households in 1841, so this is regarded as the first modern census in allowing for individual enumeration.