Information requested
- Name of street, place, road, etc.
- House number or name
- Name of each person that had spent the night in that household
- Age
- Sex (indicated by which column the age is recorded in)
- Profession or occupation
- Where born
Ages
The ages of people over 15 years old were usually rounded down to the nearest 5 years. Therefore, someone who was actually 24 years would have their age listed as 20, and someone who was actually 27 years old would have their age listed as 25.
Place of birth
The "'Where Born' column only asked two questions - 1) whether born in same county, and 2) whether born in Scotland, Ireland, or Foreign Parts. Possible answers and abbreviations to question 1 include: Yes (Y), No, (N), or Not Known (NK). For question 2, the following abbreviations were used: Scotland (S), Ireland (I), and Foreign Parts (F).
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 which can be viewed today. The original householder's schedules from 1841 to 1901 were destroyed.
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.
