Information requested
- Name of street, avenue road, etc
- House number or name
- Whether the house was inhabited
- Number of rooms occupied, if fewer than five
- Name of each person who spent the night in the household
- Relationship to the head of the family
- Marital status
- Age at last birthday (sex is indicated by which column the age is recorded in)
- Occupation
- Employer or employee or neither
- Place of birth
- Deaf, dumb, blind, or lunatic
Enumeration forms
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 5 April 1891 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.
If the head of the house was illiterate or had any problems completing the form the enumerator would complete as much as necessary. 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.
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.
New questions
The 1891 census has several more questions than are found on earlier census returns. These questions include three columns on employment status and the number of rooms occupied in the house if fewer than five.
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.
