1841 England Census

Ramsdale & Variant Surname Entries

The 1841 Census returns for England and Wales are published online by Ancestry.co.uk, The Origins Network and The UK 1841 Census.

There are:

• 494 entries under Ramsdale
• no entries under either Ramsdaille or Ramsdill
• 4 entries under Ramsdall
• 9 entries under Ramsdal
• 1 entry under Ramsdel and
• 22 entries under Ramsdell

In 1841 the administration of the Census passed into the hands of the Registrar General and the Superintendent Registrars (who were also responsible for the registration of births, marriages and deaths). The 1841 Census is considered to be the first modern UK census and was taken on 6th June 1841 (covering midnight on 6th June and 7th) and gave the total population as 15,914,000. It is filed at the Public Record Office in group code HO 107 (HO=Home Office). Details in the 1841 Census can provide:

• place: street, name, house number or house name
• houses: inhabited, uninhabited or a building
• age and sex of each person: Ages up to 15 are listed exactly as reported/recorded but ages over 15 were rounded to the nearest 5 years (i.e. a person aged 53 would be listed on the census as age 50 years)
• occupation, profession or trade
• birthplace: but only if the person was born in the county where the census was taken (usually recorded as a yes or no). If they were not born in the county there would be an entry such as S (for Scotland) or even an F for "born in foreign parts".

Enumeration forms were distributed to all households a couple of days before census night and the complete forms were collected the next day. All responses were to reflect the individual's status as of 6 June 1841 for all individuals who had spent the night in the house. People who were travelling or living abroad were enumerated at the location where they spent the night on census night. All of the details from the individual forms were later sorted and copied into enumerators' books, which are the records we can view images of today. The original householder's schedules from 1841 to 1901 were destroyed.

After information was recorded on pre-printed Census schedules, a schedule was left with a household and later collected by the enumerator. If there was no one in the house who could write, the enumerator helped to record the information. The Census enumerator then copied the information on the schedules into their official books known as Census enumerators' books. Unfortunately, the original Census schedules have been destroyed and it is the census enumerator's books that researchers see on the microfilm. Because the information in the books is a copy of the information on the schedule, there were often mistakes made in transcribing the information.

The clerks who compiled and reviewed the Census data made a variety of marks on the returns. Unfortunately, many of these tally marks were written over personal information and some fields, such as ages, can be difficult to read as a result. More useful marks include a single slash between households within a building and a double slash separating households in separate buildings.