Over the years that the Linfield and Lindfield research has been progressing, a considerable amount of census data has been collected. Members might be interested to see the numbers of census entries involved, and the way that we can estimate the total numbers using the data available.
One of the difficulties until recently, was that there was no complete record available of any of the census years, in a form which could easily be searched for a particular surname. Whilst some indexes had been produced, such as the excellent series published by June Barnes for parts of Sussex, the only way of finding the total numbers of any surname was to check every volume of the census. This task would probably take someone several months of full-time working in record offices, and was clearly beyond the resources of a group such as ours.
How then can we work out how many people of our surnames were alive in a particular year? The answer came with the publication by the Church of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) of an index to the 1881 census. This became available on microfiche a year or two ago, and is published by county, indexed in several ways. These include an alphabetical index by surname, which allowed us, for the first time, to search quickly for a surname and its variants and to establish the total numbers enumerated in that year. Copies of these microfiche are available for England and Wales in most good libraries, and I was able to print the relevant pages for each county in the space of a few lunchtime sessions at the Westminter Archive near my office. Each sheet contains 51 entries, and the total number of Linfield, Lindfield, Linville, Linkfield and Lingfield entries in 1881 is 787. We have yet to check the Scottish counties, the indexes for which are only available in Scotland.
In order to estimate the numbers in any other year, we can use the total numbers of poulation for the whole of England and Wales. A reasonable estimate can be obtained by assuming that our names represent a constant fraction of the total.
The table below sets out the figures. The first column shows the total population (in millions) of England, Wales and Scotland for each of the census years starting with the first census in 1801.
| UK pop | Year | Number | Total | Percent | Cum no | Cum total | Percent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11.94 | 1801 | 0 | 303 | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | |
| 13.36 | 1811 | 0 | 339 | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | |
| 15.47 | 1821 | 0 | 393 | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | |
| 17.83 | 1831 | 0 | 453 | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | |
| 20.18 | 1841 | 28 | 512 | 5.47 | 28 | 512 | 5.47 |
| 22.26 | 1851 | 76 | 565 | 13.45 | 104 | 1077 | 9.66 |
| 24.52 | 1861 | 7 | 622 | 1.12 | 111 | 1699 | 6.53 |
| 27.43 | 1871 | 1 | 696 | 0.14 | 112 | 2396 | 4.68 |
| 31.01 | 1881 | 686 | 787 | 87.17 | 798 | 3183 | 25.07 |
| 34.26 | 1891 | 1 | 869 | 0.12 | 799 | 4052 | 19.72 |
| 38.24 | 1901 | 0 | 970 | 0.00 | 799 | 5022 | 15.91 |
| 42.08 | 1911 | 0 | 1068 | 0.00 | 799 | 6090 | 13.12 |
| 44.02 | 1921 | 0 | 1117 | 0.00 | 799 | 7208 | 11.09 |
| 46.03 | 1931 | 0 | 1168 | 799 | 8376 | 9.54 | |
| 50.22 | 1951 | 0 | 1275 | 799 | 9650 | 8.28 | |
| 52.7 | 1961 | 0 | 1337 | 799 | 10988 | 7.27 | |
| 53.79 | 1966 | 0 | 1365 | 799 | 12353 | 6.47 | |
| 55.5 | 1971 | 0 | 1409 | 799 | 13761 | 5.81 | |
| 56.3 | 1981 | 0 | 1429 | 799 | 15190 | 5.26 | |
| 57.99 | 1991 | 0 | 1472 | 799 | 16662 | 4.80 | |
| TOTAL | 799 | 18149 | |||||
The fourth column shows the numbers of Lin(d)fields, estimated in proportion to those totals from the figure for 1881. (For the present, I have ignored the handful of people in Scotland, almost certainly less than 20, who will be added to the 787 figure). The third column shows the number of entries currently entered into the spreadsheet and the fifth column is the percentage which that number represents of the total for the year. Thus it may be seen that for 1851, we have entered 76, or about 13%, of the estimated 565 Lin(d)fields in that census. Similarly, we have entered 686, or about 87% of the 787 entries for 1881.
The 6th column shows the cumulative number of entries starting with the 1841 census, while the next column shows the corresponding cumlative total of the estimated numbers alive, and for whom the information is currently available. Since the 1891 data is the most recent to be released under the 100 year rule, the later years are not added in to the total. Finally, the right hand column shows the percentage of the total number entered, again on a cumulative basis starting in 1841. The reason for starting in 1841 is that prior to that time, census enumerators were not required to list names of individuals in each household, although many did actually do so. We cannot therefore expect to confirm the estimated totals from the records, however much time we spend searching.
It will be seen that we have entered 19.72% of the estimated amount of available data up to and including 1891. At risk of stating the obvious, we still have quite a long way to go!