Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Census Project was set up by the Jewish Historical Society and the Board of Deputies Community Research Unit. A database was compiled of the population of an area in Spitalfields in the East End of London in 1891, using Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet and working from photocopies of the microfilm of the enumerators' books. It built on a pilot project using the 1881 census for the same area, developing the methodology and providing a comparative dataset.
The area was chosen for the 1891 Census Project because of its high concentration of Jewish population, as shown on the Russell and Lewis Jewish East London map of 1901. The database contains the complete population of the area.
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The area contained a total of 7,561 people on the census night of 1891. There are 1,353 schedules, for the purpose of the study called households, and the first person listed on each schedule is termed Head of Family. The details for each household include the address, number of rooms if less than five, name of each person, relation to Head of family, marital status, sex, age, occupation, whether employer, employee or neither, birthplace, deaf and dumb/blind/lunatic.
Coding has been added so that each individual has a separate four-part number indicating numeric order, enumerator, schedule and order in household. There is also an estimated non-Jewish classification; occupational classifications under two systems; and a birthplace classification. This coding facilitates rapid analysis of the data, although it presents certain problems: interpretation is not always straightforward and categories are not always clear-cut. A separate alphabetical Index of Heads has also been produced.