The 1901 British Census was taken on the night of 31 March 1901. The following information was requested: Name of street, avenue road, etc.; house number or name; whether or not the house was inhabited; number of rooms occupied if less than five; name of each person that had spent the night in that household; relationship of person enumerated to the head of the family; each person's marital status; age at last birthday (sex is indicated by which column the age is recorded in); each person's occupation; whether they are employer or employee or neither; person's place of birth; whether deaf, dumb, blind, or lunatic.
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 31 March 1901 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 house holders schedules from 1841 to 1901 were destroyed.
Census returns were collected according to registration district. These returns were divided into sub-districts and assigned consecutive piece numbers for reference purposes. The piece numbers begin in London with number one and work roughly south to north, followed by the Welsh districts and then the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. You will find the piece number on a paper strip at the bottom of every image, following the PRO class number. There may be hundreds of pieces within a county.
In addition to the piece number, each page of the returns includes a folio number and/or a page number. The folio number was stamped onto every other page before microfilming and is located in the upper right hand corner of the image. Folio numbering usually starts over at the beginning of each piece. The page number is part of the printed form and is found on every page in the upper right hand corner. The page numbers start over at the beginning of every enumeration district. A full reference number for a record in the 1901 census includes the PRO class number (RG13), the piece number, the folio number, and the page number. Keep in mind that you may have to look at several enumeration districts to find the page you want within a given folio since the page numbers start over with every ED.
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.
1901 Census Online
The 1901 census returns for England and Wales should have been available online at the PRO website for public consultation from Wednesday 2 January 2002 at 9am GMT but due to heavy demand the launch was postponed for 9 months. The 1901 Census Online service is now available 24 hours a day 7 days a week, as a full Internet service. To permit more users to access the database and maximise throughput, users are being limited to 2 hours of continuous use. At least one operation (such as a search, display of search details or image download) must be conducted every 15 minutes to stay active on the system, but note that accessing the Help pages is not classed as an activity for this purpose.
The 1901 census project is part of Census Online which aims to digitise all the earlier censuses. The PRO has already started work on the 1881 and 1891 censuses:
- Searching: You can search a comprehensive name index to over 32 million individuals.
- Images: You can view images of the original census pages as written by the census enumerator in 1901.
All RAMSDALE and RAMSDALL surname entries in the 1901 British Census Index (England, Scotland and Wales) have been extracted and published on this web site. The 1901 Census Index contains 881 entries under the surname RAMSDALE and 21 entries under the surname RAMSDALL.
1901 Census: Ramsdale & Ramsdall Entries County CCC Ramsdale Entries %age Ramsdall Entries %age Ayrshire [Scotland] AYR 2 0.2 0 0.0 Bedfordshire BDF 1 0.1 0 0.0 Berkshire BRK 0 0.0 0 0.0 Buckinghamshire BKM 2 0.2 0 0.0 Cambridgeshire CAM 2 0.2 0 0.0 Cheshire CHS 6 0.7 0 0.0 Cornwall CON 1 0.1 0 0.0 Cumberland CUL 0 0.0 0 0.0 Derbyshire DBY 37 4.2 2 9.5 Devonshire DEV 1 0.1 0 0.0 Dorset DOR 0 0.0 0 0.0 Durham DUR 62 7.0 0 0.0 Essex ESS 6 0.7 0 0.0 Glamorgan [Wales] GLA 5 0.5 0 0.0 Gloucestershire GLS 0 0.0 0 0.0 Hampshire HAM 2 0.2 0 0.0 Herefordshire HEF 0 0.0 0 0.0 Hertfordshire HRT 1 0.1 0 0.0 Huntingdonshire HUN 2 0.2 0 0.0 Kent KEN 9 1.0 1 4.8 Lancashire LAN 436 49.5 0 0.0 Leicestershire LEI 0 0.0 0 0.0 Lincolnshire LIN 11 1.2 0 0.0 London LND 8 0.9 0 0.0 Middlesex MDX 37 4.2 0 0.0 Monmouthshire [Wales] MON 3 0.3 0 0.0 Norfolk NFK 19 2.2 0 0.0 Northamptonshire NTH 8 0.9 0 0.0 Northumberland NBL 4 0.5 0 0.0 Nottinghamshire NTT 4 0.5 0 0.0 Oxfordshire OXF 1 0.1 0 0.0 Rutland RUT 0 0.0 0 0.0 Shropshire SAL 2 0.2 0 0.0 Somerset SOM 2 0.2 0 0.0 Staffordshire STS 32 3.6 0 0.0 Suffolk SFK 3 0.3 1 4.8 Surrey SRY 21 2.4 0 0.0 Sussex SSX 1 0.1 0 0.0 Warwickshire WAR 10 1.1 11 52.4 Westmorland WES 0 0.0 0 0.0 Wiltshire WIL 0 0.0 0 0.0 Worcestershire WOR 2 0.2 0 0.0 Yorkshire YKS 135 15.3 6 28.6 Total ¹ 881 100% 21 100% 1 Includes two from the USA