Joan Corder’s ‘Dictionary of Suffolk Arms’ (Suffolk Records Soc. Vol. VII, 1965) makes reference to three Lin(d)field Arms:
I have been looking at the Ipswich Lindfields, and how they have been intimately involved with the town’s affairs, for some time and have compiled notes from various publications of the Ipswich Borough Records where they mention a Lindfield or near relative.
The Ipswich Lindfields covered five generations, beginning with William & Elizabeth, married in 1559, through four generations of Gilbert (the last one dying in 1692 at Whatfield near Ipswich). Continue reading
In order to arrive at a reasonably definitive figure for the population of a country, county or state, it has been the practice for governments to conduct a census at regular intervals, typically every 10 years. When and if the detailed records are eventually made available to the public, these provide an unrivalled method of gathering information on individual ancestors and also for examining the total numbers and geographical distribution of people sharing the same surname. This article considers what the census can tell us about this geographical distribution. Continue reading
The first question that people ask when told that someone is studying the family history is almost invariably ‘how far back have you gone?’. The second question, when one has explained what a one-name study actually involves, is usually along the lines of ‘how many people do you have in the database?’, closely followed by ‘how many people of your name are alive in the world today?’
The last of these is a question that also exercises those of us who are engaged in the organisation of one-name societies, not least because it helps to define the number of potential members. It also helps us to determine when all the various branches have been identified. This article examines some of the statistics for the Linfield and similar names and shows several methods by which the present, and past, population may be estimated.
Ideally, from a family historian’s point of view at least, one would simply consult the latest census results in order to determine the number of Lin(d)fields in the country today. One would repeat that process for each country to arrive at the total number in the world and to show the distribution between countries. In the real world, however, considerations of privacy and human rights dictate that census information is not released into the public domain until after an agreed interval. In most cases this is defined in such a way as to ensure that all of the data subjects have died. In the United Kingdom, for example, the time is set at 100 years from the end of the census year, so that the 1901 census became available for public inspection on 2nd January 2002. Some countries set a shorter time, typically 70 or 75 years, while some have agreed that the data will be destroyed and never released to the public.
In the absence of a definitive survey such as the census, there are several less accurate methods that may be used to estimate the current population of a given surname:
This article will explore how each of these techniques works and will indicate the numbers for the Linfield name variants that may be estimated in each case.
The requirement to register a birth, marriage or death came into effect on 1 July 1837 in England and Wales and on 1 January 1855 in Scotland. The indexes of registrations are standard sources of information for family historians, and as such are often the first to be transcribed by groups researching a particular surname. In the case of the Linfield variants, we have collected all of the birth, marriage and death registrations from 1837 up to 1994, and these are available for members and others who need the details for their research or in order to purchase a certificate.
During the early years of civil registration many births were not registered, the extent of under-registration having been estimated to be at least 10%. This was particularly true for illegitimate children. From 1875, there was a penalty for failing to register the birth of a child within 42 days. This often led to parents giving a later date than was actually the case in order to avoid having to pay the fine. A birth could not be registered at all after 6 months had elapsed.
On the face of it, we could arrive at a figure for the present Lin(d)field population simply by listing all of the births in the last 120 years, and then deleting all those from that list whose deaths had also been registered. The remaining number should be those people born with the name who are still alive today. As with all the best simple plans, there are however some flaws in this scheme.
The first difficulty is one of definition. In the census, voters lists and phone books, the number obviously includes women who have taken the name on marriage. Indeed, among these sources, only the census records actually show the marital status, and this is the one source that is denied to us in respect of the current or very recent data. It is impossible therefore, to distinguish unmarried from married females in the electoral roll; a male and a female at the same address are probably man and wife, but could be mother and son or father and daughter, or even daughter-in-law. Three females of the same name with a male shown at the same address could be a wife and two daughters, but could also be 3 unmarried daughters.
It is convenient, therefore, to adopt the convention that we count all those currently bearing the name, regardless of whether they were born with that name. Given the present situation where the average number of children is about 2, it may be argued that since males and females are born in almost equal numbers, the number of wives who have taken the name on marriage will be balanced out by the number of daughters who relinquish the name on marriage. This balance is skewed slightly in one direction by the modern trend for women to retain their maiden surname, and in the other by women who revert to their former names or gain another new name on divorce and remarriage. More seriously, the balance is skewed by daughters who do not marry and retain the name for life.
Further errors arise due to migration, adoption, and changes of name for other reasons. It is estimated that between 1815 and 1931, more than 20 million people emigrated from Britain to countries outside Europe. Even allowing for a substantial proportion of Scots and Irish in that number, this probably represents an annual rate of at least 1 in every 400 of the population of England and Wales. If the Lin(d)field families were typical of the general population, this would suggest that as many as 100 members of the Lin(d)field families might have been expected to have emigrated during the 100 year period.
These difficulties having been recognised, the calculation is still valid as a crude estimating technique, provided that we accept that the margin of error may be as high as, say, plus or minus 20%.
The total number of births registered in the years 1895-1994 inclusive is 1884. If we then subtract the numbers of deaths recorded in the same period, for those entries where the age indicates a birth after 1894, a total of 655, this leaves 1229 people who would still have been alive at the end of 1994. This assumes, as noted above, that for each death of a Linfield widow there is a death of a Linfield daughter under her married name.
The number of births registered in each decade gives an indication of the trend in birth rates, particularly if the figures are expressed in proportion to the total population at the time. I have written previously about the trend observed during the first 100 years of registration, using the population figures for the census years, and the number of Lin(d)field births for each decade.1
We can also use the national birth rate as a crude estimate of the Lin(d)field population, provided that we recognise the possible errors. For example, if the numbers of Lin(d)field births are expressed as a fraction of the total population, the rate can be seen to be fairly consistent during the period up to the turn of the century. Birth rates generally declined from about 1900 and this trend is also evident in the Lin(d)field figures.
For much of the nineteenth century the annual birth rate was about 35 per thousand of the population. The Lin(d)field figure in that period works out to about 9 per decade, or an annual rate of 0.9, per million of total population. From this, it may be estimated that the Lin(d)field population increased from about 400 to 700 during the 19th century.
The birth rate declined during the 20th century from 28.2 per thousand in 1900 to 13.2 in 1980 with peaks following each of the two world wars. It then rose again slightly and in 1990, the latest year for which we have a reasonable sample of birth registration data, the rate was 13.9 per thousand. The annual rate of Lin(d)field births in the 1980’s and early 90’s was 16.4, and on this basis we can estimate the Lin(d)field population as about 1180. However, given that the national rates were lower in 1980 and 1997 (13.2 and 12.3 respectively) it is possible that using the 1990 figure understates the result by between 5 and 12%.
This estimate obviously assumes that the birth rate among the Lin(d)field families were similar to those in the population at large and that family sizes and mortality rates were also typical of the general population. In the early years of registration, there is no obvious reason why the Linfield birth rate should have differed significantly from the national figure. However, as populations become more diverse in terms of ethnicity and culture, there is a greater possibility of error. We find though, that in 1991, only 2.91 million, or 5.05% of the population described themselves as being in one of the non-white categories listed. This was the first census in which respondents were asked to categorise themselves in terms of colour; previous census returns asked for the place of birth of the head of household, but this data was not very informative since so many non-white people in Britain were second- or third-generation. Such a small proportion is unlikely to affect the overall national rates very significantly and any errors are likely to be masked by differences that occur between the Lin(d)field population and the white population as a whole.
The first available "census", and perhaps the most famous, is of course the Domesday Book of 1089. However, similar surveys were carried out on a more limited basis such as the Leicestershire Survey (about 1124-1129) and the Lindsey Survey (1124-1128). Various ecclesiastical census surveys have also been taken over the 900 years since Domesday.
| UK pop (millions) | Year | Number | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11.94 | 1801 | 0 | 306 |
| 13.36 | 1811 | 0 | 343 |
| 15.47 | 1821 | 0 | 397 |
| 17.83 | 1831 | 0 | 458 |
| 20.18 | 1841 | 43 | 518 |
| 22.26 | 1851 | 156 | 571 |
| 24.52 | 1861 | 53 | 629 |
| 27.43 | 1871 | 39 | 704 |
| 31.01 | 1881 | 796 | 796 |
| 34.26 | 1891 | 35 | 879 |
| 38.24 | 1901 | 0 | 982 |
| 42.08 | 1911 | 0 | 1080 |
| 44.02 | 1921 | 0 | 1130 |
| 46.03 | 1931 | 0 | 1182 |
| 50.22 | 1951 | 0 | 1289 |
| 52.7 | 1961 | 0 | 1353 |
| 53.79 | 1966 | 0 | 1381 |
| 55.5 | 1971 | 0 | 1425 |
| 56.3 | 1981 | 0 | 1445 |
| 57.99 | 1991 | 0 | 1489 |
The modern census series started in 1801. (An earlier attempt in 1753 failed in its goal of measuring population growth using a questionnaire to parish clergy.) Since 1801 there has been a census every 10 years except for 1941, which was omitted on account of the war. Unfortunately, this gap in the records was compounded when the 1931 returns were destroyed by fire during WW2. Two additional censuses owed their existence to war, however. These were the 1915 (Aliens Act) census and 1938/9 census (1939 Sept. 29th National Registration), prompted by the need to determine where and how many aliens lived in the UK.
As noted already, full access is available to all census data from the 1801 to the 1901. However, prior to 1841 the census contained little useful data for most family historians and not many of the earlier returns survive in any case.
Access to processed data
rom the more recent census surveys is also available but this simply takes the form of statistical material such as the numbers of males in a district, social trends, and so on. It does however give us figures for the total population and these can be used to estimate the numbers of Linfield variants if we are prepared to make certain assumptions.
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 few years ago, and is now available on CD-ROM which allows searches to be made quickly by computer. This includes an alphabetical index by surname, which allowed us, for the first time, to search quickly for all Linfield surname variants and to establish the total numbers enumerated in that year. The total number of Linfield, Lindfield, Linville, Linkfield and Lingfield entries in England and Wales in 1881 is 787. (There were a further 9 in Scotland, but these were fairly recent migrants from Sussex. For the purposes of the estimation that follows, these may be ignored).
In order to estimate the numbers in any other year, we can use the total numbers of population for the whole of England, Wales and Scotland. A reasonable estimate can then be obtained by assuming that our names represent a constant fraction of that total.
The table above 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.
The fourth column shows the numbers of Lin(d)fields, estimated in proportion to those totals from the figure for 1881. It will be seen that for 1991, the last year for which census population is available, this process gives an estimated 1489 individuals using the Linfield variant surnames. The population of the UK has been relatively static over the last 10 years, with a significant part of any increase due to immigration from countries where the surname is not found. The figure for 2001 is likely therefore to be substantially unchanged.
The third column shows the number of entries currently entered into the spreadsheet. Thus it may be seen that for 1851, we have entered 156 of the estimated 571 Lin(d)fields in that census.
Prior to 1841, 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 is interesting though, to apply the same process of estimation to work backwards from 1801, using such estimates as are available for the total population.
| England & Wales millions |
UK pop millions |
Year | Linfield Est E&W |
Linfield Est UK |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 1100 | 51 | ||
| 4.16 | 4.47 | 1570 | 107 | 115 |
| 4.81 | 5.17 | 1600 | 123 | 133 |
| 5.6 | 6.02 | 1630 | 144 | 155 |
| 5.77 | 6.2 | 1670 | 148 | 159 |
| 6.04 | 6.5 | 1700 | 155 | 167 |
| 6.51 | 7.00 | 1750 | 167 | 180 |
| Figures in italics are calculated from 1700 ratio UK/E&W | ||||
A similar technique may be applied to death rates. Between 1984 and 1994, the average annual death rate for the Linfield variant names was 14.9. The national average in 1990 was 11.1 per thousand, suggesting a Lin(d)field population of around 1343. Again, this assumes that our surname population was statistically representative of the whole.
The history of democracy in the United Kingdom has resulted in an electoral system that many regarded as outdated and in need of radical reform. On the credit side, however, the evolution of our voting system has led to the list of voters being something that we expect to be available for public scrutiny. The practice of vote-rigging in the early 18th century, of which the attorney John Linfield was famously found guilty, might perhaps have played a part in shaping our traditional insistence on such openness in the conduct of elections. It would be nice to think that a Linfield had done his bit for genealogy, albeit unwittingly and for all the wrong reasons!
Residents of other countries are not so fortunate. Canada, for example, has very strong privacy laws, both at the provincial and federal levels. Canadians do not therefore enjoy the same unfettered access to voting registers. The same culture of privacy applies to births, marriages and deaths, so that the techniques I have discussed for using the birth and death registrations are also impossible in Canada. These registrations are a provincial responsibility and there is no one central register for the whole of Canada. Each province has its own electoral register for elections to the provincial legislatures, and a national register is maintained by Elections Canada for elections at the federal level. British Columbia has a permanent electoral register, whereas some provincial administrations still do an enumeration before each election.
Whatever the reasons and history, it is a great convenience to family historians that the Register of Electors may be found in every public library and we should consider ourselves fortunate that it is so accessible. It has been possible for several years to obtain the data on CD-ROM, together with software allowing it to be searched very easily. The product that I used is marketed as UK InfoDisk, and is available in several versions, with a range of search and data handling facilities. The data also includes phone book entries.
The latest disc owned by the Group is UK Info Disk 2000, which contains the 1999 Register of Electors. This has a total of 881 individuals with one of the Linfield variant names, in 535 households. Since only those aged 18 or over are included, we must then add the births registered after 1981 to arrive at the year 2000 estimate. (A quick check of the birth registrations for 1981/2 confirms that the 1981 children are listed on the 1999 roll while those born in 1982 are not.)
Starting at the beginning of 1982, there are 115 birth registrations up to the end of 1994, or 8.8 per year. This figure excludes any births in Scotland, but these are so few as to be negligible. Adding a further 44 to allow for the 5 years up to the start of 2000 for which we have not yet collected the birth registrations, brings the figure to 159 children below voting age. Our records show that 2 of these died before 2000, giving us a final estimate of 994.
If we summarise the various estimates, and postulate the error margins for each method, the results are as follows:
| Method | Error margin | Weight | Estimated population in year 2000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Birth and death registrations | +20% – 20% | 3 | 1229 (984 – 1474) |
| Birth rate calculation | -5% +12% | 4 | 1180 (1121-1321) (on 1990 data) |
| Death rate calculation | -5% +10% | 4 | 1343 (1275 – 1477) |
| Census extrapolation | +20% -40% | 2 | 1489 (893 – 1786) |
| Electoral roll and phone books | -5% +5% | 10 | 994 (944 – 1043) |
| Weighted average estimate | 1160 |
The estimates of error rate are my own, and I would not claim that they are arrived at very scientifically. I have attempted to suggest a figure that includes both systematic errors in the estimating method, and also those errors in the base data on which each calculation is made. The weightings are based on the confidence that might be expected of the figure actually being in the middle of the error range, and here again, the estimates are entirely my own. (As a matter of interest, a simple averaging of the 5 estimates produces a figure of 1247, so it can be seen that the relative weightings do not make a major difference.)
However inaccurate the various methods may be, it is clear that the true figure is around 1000. It is highly unlikely that it exceeds 2000 and fairly unlikely to be greater than 1500.
As regards the original question of just how rare the surname is, several ideas have been suggested for classifying names according to their rarity. One such method which has gained considerable acceptance is to use the 1881 population. This was suggested by Geoff Riggs in 1997 and the classifications that he suggested were as follows:2
| High frequency | 0.1% or greater (30,001+ people) |
| Medium frequency | 0.01 to 0.099% (3,000 to 30,000) |
| Low frequency | 0.001 to 0.0099% (300 to 3000) |
| Rare | 0.0001 to 0.0009% (1 to 300) |
On this basis, the Linfield variants, with an 1881 total of 796, or 0.00257% of the population, would be classed as a low frequency surname.
Trevor Ogden wrote an interesting article about this in the Guild Journal a couple of years ago.3 More recently, he has commented that there are a lot of very uncommon surnames. Quoting the data from the UK Info disc, (which was also the source of the Electoral Roll data quoted above), he notes that about 42% of names occur once, 16% of names occur twice, 7% occur three times, and so on with ever decreasing numbers. Phonebooks are not such a good sample of the population, but they show a similar pattern.
Trevor goes on to point out that if just one male holds a name, probability theory and computer modelling shows that there is about an 89% chance that the name will become extinct, although this depends on the assumptions about the number of sons people are like to have (ie, a probability of 0.89). If there are n men with a name, the chance of its becoming extinct is 0.89 raised to the power n. For example, if there were five holders of a name, the chances of none of them eventually having any male descendants is 0.89 raised to the power of 5, which equals about 0.56, so in this case there is still a better than even chance that the name will become extinct. However, if there are 50 holders of a name in the first generation, the probability that the name will become extinct is only 0.3% – a 99.7% chance that the name will survive.
Readers with access to the Internet might want to look at the press release ‘How common is your name?’ at http://www.ons.gov.uk/regist_f.htm It has been compiled by the Office of National Statistics and is based on registrations with GPs since 1991. The commonest male name in England and Wales is not John Smith, as one might think, but David Jones, with 15763 occurrences. John Smith is actually third with 12793. However, Smith is slightly more common than Jones as a surname. Robert Davies is 100th with 3366. The most common female name is Margaret Smith with 7640 and the 100th is Elizabeth Evans with 1974. Also given are the 100 most popular surnames and the 50 most popular male and 50 most popular female forenames. The figures quoted are for for England and Wales only.
Of one thing we may be certain – genealogy would be much more difficult if we were all called Smith!
1 Lindfield and Linfield Births Registered in England and Wales 1837-1937; edited by A Lindfield; 1993 Lin(d)field One Name Group ISBN 0 9522738 0 2
2 The 1881 Project – British Surname Distribution; Geoff Riggs, Journal of One-Name Studies, vol 6 no 3, July 1997.
3 How rare are surnames?; Trevor Ogden, Journal of One-name Studies, April 1998,.
Reading ‘The Essential Guide to Genealogy’ (edited by Ellen Galford, published earlier this year by Marshall Publishing) reminds me that family history provides an interesting opening to the vast area of social history. With this new book as a guide, here are a few suggestions for extending research into other avenues for our Lin(d)field Group’.
According to Stanford Smith, since we had no ancient connections with the villages of Lindfield and Lingfield, our manorial origin was Linkfield (now part of Redhill) in Surrey. In Nigel Dunne’s book ‘The Redhill Story’ (published in 1994) we find a brief introduction to its history (pp. 8-18). Linkfield was a sub-manor of Reigate and first recorded in 1315 when it was owned by Nicholas de Lynkefeld. The manor house stood on what used to be the corner of Station Road and Linkfield Lane, before the roundabout was built.
It would be useful to know more about Linkfield, as Linkfield Street remains one of the main roads in Redhill. Any member living in the Redhill, Reigate or Kingston areas might tackle this intriguing part of our Norman and Medieval family origins.
These include such families as the Wyndhams of Petworth House and later the Egremonts, the Stanfords of Preston Manor, the Shelleys of Field Place and Castle Goring, the Borrers of Henfield and Hurstpierpoint, Samson Copestake of Ewhurst Manor and Shermanbury Place, and so on.
These associations could be as Linfield tenant farmers or as employees on their estates or in their large houses. As Joan Ham has shown in her local research on Storrington and district, Linfield family references occur in many places; her recent work on the Canon Palmer Diaries has thrown up some interesting details about some of my 19th century ancestors! However, as Malcolm has often pointed out in his articles, the Linfields’ fortunes were moderate and typical of tenant and small farmers, craftsmen like blacksmiths, brickmakers and stonehealers, with various categories of manual worker. Luckily from time to time there was the emergence of an academic, a cleric or some other scholar!! This naturally leads to suggestion (iii).
In past issues of ‘Longshot’, we have had articles on the following: Robert Linfield of Barnards Inn, Professor Frederick Bloomfield Linfield, Ralph Parkinson Linfield, and Gilbert Lindfield M.P. of Ipswich. But we still need more information on John Lyndefeld, Archdeacon of Chichester who had links with All Souls College, Oxford, John Linfield of Coolhurst and any other Linfields recorded as Oxbridge or other university graduates.
In the House of Commons Library, there are details on the various Lin(d)field M.P.s. Another source of information are the various Institutes of Electrical, Mechanical, Chemical and other types of Engineer for Lin(d)field references. In some cases, old school records would be useful too.
Finally, recent television programmes, such as the 1900 House, the 1940 House and ‘Surviving the Iron Age’, have introduced the latest approach at historical understanding. Using any data that we have in our family records, or in ‘Longshot’, someone might write a ‘day in the life’ of one of their ancestors. So here is my first attempt (!) with Peter Linfield of Storrington, in the Summer of 1781:
"Our step daughter Sarah was twenty earlier in the year so she is now a very valuable member of the family in assisting my wife Sarah with her children. Anne has just celebrated her 13th birthday and William his 12th. In May our youngest child Peter was born so he joins Lucy (10), Edward (7), Thomas (5) and James (3). Since we still have the farm at Palmers, West Chiltington, as well as our shop in Church Street and another house in the village, we are all kept very well occupied with our various duties. William is my butcher’s assistant in the shop whereas I have John Humphries as farm manager at Palmers. We are lucky to have a pleasant house to live in as well as the shop to run, so we have some comfort for all the family to enjoy. Also, we have arranged for our children to have some lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic; Anne and Lucy are doing very well and progressing. We eat well and the children take part in village and church activities."
(This could be elaborated with some imaginative description of late 18th century Storrington village life).
Palmer’s Farm House as it is today – Peter Linfield (1734-91), his mother Sarah (nee Dave) and his second wife Sarah Sayers moved there soon after their marriage in 1766.
This millennium year 2000 has enabled me to extend my family history in several ways and briefly I review the main elements.
The publication of two fascinating books by the Horsham Museum Society in January, “The Shelleys of Field Place” – the story of the family and their estates – and “The letters of Bysshe and Timothy Shelley” and other documents put me in touch with Mr George Bason of Hove. Mr Bason has researched the history of Castle Goring for many years, and I am extremely grateful to him for sending me a file of notes and photographs, including one of the gamekeeper’s cottage where my grandmother, Katherine Leach lived with her father Noah Leech, gamekeeper in the mid-19th century. The gamekeeper’s cottage remains an architectural gem, as does Castle Goring itself, originally built for Sir Timothy Bysshe Shelley in 1790-1810, the poet Shelley’s grandfather (see Pevsner’s account on pages 125/7, The Buildings of England: Sussex , Penguin 1965).
My father often talked to me of his mother’s domestic service at Castle Goring and it had obviously affected her greatly. As she only married when she was 35 on July 18th 1885, she registered her first child Frederick in 1887 as resident at Castle Goring, so the connection obviously continued after marriage for a while. Castle Goring near Worthing is now a language school! Unfortunately, my grandmother died before I was born and Uncle Fred, too, had been killed in 1917 whilst near Arras in the First World War.
We spent a delightful week’s holiday at Eastbourne in June. Whilst there I visited Summerdown Road to find the large house, Muskoday, where my aunt Elizabeth Linfield was in domestic service at the time of her tragic death – she was found drowned at Pevensey Bay on November 12th 1924 (see Longshot Vol 5 No 2 p.52). Unfortunately we failed to find the house – no wonder, it had been destroyed by a German bomb. In a recent letter from Vera Hodsoll (formerly Hon. Secretary of the Eastbourne Local History Society) she told me that the house was destroyed in a heavy raid by Focke-Wolfe FW 190s in the afternoon of June 6th 1943, exactly one year before D-day. So it is sometimes impossible to see the houses where one’s family has had connections in the past, despite my suggestion in a previous Longshot (see Vol 1 No 2, p.42, “Starting a Picture Story of One’s Own Family”.)
However, I have been able to build up a collection of photographs where my father, grandfather and his grandfather’s grandfather, Peter Linfield (1734-91) lived. They make a very colourful and interesting album and I am adding a copy of the Gamekeeper’s Cottage, Castle Goring shortly!
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!
Members will be aware that a substantial part of the subscription income of the Group is directed into research, but it may be interesting, and may help to put those subscriptions into context, to know how much a typical item of information costs.
As with most areas of research, the cost of family history information follows a law of diminishing returns. In the early stages, it is natural to collect all the available information from sources such as the telephone directories, the International Genealogical Index and the birth, marriage and death registration indexes. These yield relatively large quantities of data at very little cost, assuming that the work of collecting the information is done by volunteers! However, the quality of the information is obviously limited.
An entry for a telephone subscriber will often give only an initial and no indication of gender, so that even with a fairly uncommon surname, there are several possibilities including the widows of that surname whose first names we have not recorded. The identities of these individuals will often be established only when a street directory or other record yields further details such as the full first name. Except for a few such directories in public libraries, these will usually involve some cost, either to purchase the directory from a secondhand book dealer, or by payment to a search service such as FONS. The Group has a modest collection of Kelly’s and other street directories, particularly from areas of Sussex with significant numbers of Lin(d)field surnames.
Entries in civil registrations indexes did not give the age on death prior to 1866, nor the surname of the spouse on marriages prior to 1912. The maiden name of the mother apears in the birth index only after 1911. In these cases we may have no alternative but to order a copy of the certificate, which remains, for the present at least, the only way to obtain the full details. There is a lively debate on this issue, and a great deal of pressure is being applied to the government to make this process less expensive and the records more accessible, but the cost for a certificate remains at £6-50 until this is resolved.
Having collected the more obvious and freely available information, the search naturally moves on to more specialised and obscure types of record. Military records are a rich source of data, and mention has been made previously in LONGSHOT of some of the main sources. These include pension records and medal rolls and of course the list of war graves held by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Whilst the medal rolls are accessible without charge at the Public Records Office, it is obviously more convenient, and less costly in travelling expenses, to obtain books listing all the recipients of a particular medal where these are available.
FONS (Family Origin Name Survey) has been going for a number of years. We have been using them for at least 4 years and they have proved to be a very useful source for our one-name study. However, at £2 per item, their service would obviously be very expensive if we were dealing with a relatively common name, since they do not provide the facility to specify the particular categories of record in which we are interested. We are now beginning to find that some of the material they send us has already been covered in our records. For example, we had a search carried out some time ago by the War Graves Commission at a cost of about £20, for all the Linfield and Lindfield graves listed in their database, some 30 in all. (We are registered for each of the 4 services, pre 1600, 1600-1858, 1859-1900 and 1901-1940). FONS have recently covered some of the published lists of war graves and several of the items they have sent us recently have been graves we already had on the WGC list. Whilst it is irritating to have to pay £2 each for these, it is inevitable given the way that the service works.
In terms of a price per data item, £2 is clearly expensive when compared with, say the 1881 census fiche (about 400 Linfield/Lindfield individuals in Sussex at a cost of around £40, or around 10p each). On the other hand, it looks like good value alongside the Biography Database CD-ROMS at around £90 each which yielded less than 20 items between the two issued so far, or around £10 each, and we certainly have books in our library which have cost £10 or more and only contain one reference to the names we are researching.
Clearly, the examples shown do not bear direct comparison, in that many of the books and records in our library are also a source of information on other names, such as the families with whom the Lin(d)fields married. Incidentally, we are always happy to look up other names for members, particularly where the search will add to the information on the various Lin(d)field family trees.
Another source which appears at first sight to be excessively costly is the CD-ROM of Soldiers Died in the Great War. SDGW was originally published by the War Office in 81 volumes and sets of these books are very expensive and seldom appear for sale. The CD-ROM is actually much more than an electronic copy of the books – it includes extensive database search facilities which allow, for example, searching by regiment and place of death. The cost of the CD is currently £220, though we bought it at the pre-publication price of £150 plus VAT. Each of the 15 Lin(d)field entries might therefore be costed at around £10. However, the value of owning the CD in the longer term is that we can also find the husbands of female Lin(d)fields widowed in the war, as well as being able to assist other researchers in return for assistance with the Lin(d)field research.
The complete listing of all the books and other material owned by the Group is held as part of the main database and can be printed for any member who would like a copy. Please send an A4 SAE to me, with a cheque or stamps to the value of £1. The Library List also includes material held by individual members, where these have been notified to me.