4 - Origins, Distribution and Composition of the Immigrant Cohort

Summary

Origins

WE saw in the previous chapter that Guernsey’s population rose by nearly 20 per cent between 1821 and 1831, and that this was partly due to immigration. Responding to the influx, the Royal Court gave orders for two special enumerations in 1827 and 1830, principally to ascertain details of non-natives. Both enumerations were Island-wide, but complete returns survive for neither. For the 1827 census, which listed the names and addresses of both migrants and natives, returns are available for St Peter Port, St Martins, the Vale, St Peters and the Forest. For the 1830 census, which focused exclusively on non-natives, details survive only for St Peter Port and are not fully representative, since only adult men were enumerated, and incomers from higher social strata were excluded. Nevertheless, the 1830 census collected a comprehensive range of information on respondents, including (crucially, for our purposes) respondents’ birthplaces, and a valuable document profiling 1,039 male migrants to St Peter Port in 1830 survives. Analysis of the 1830 enumeration shows that 76 per cent of town-based respondents had come from England, with a further 10 per cent from France, and 9 per cent from Ireland. Of the English subgroup, nearly three-quarters hailed from the south-western counties of Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, with a smaller contingent from Hampshire.

This provides us with a starting-point for our analysis, but, to extend our information, we must look to later British Government censuses. These required respondents to provide data on their origins from 1841. However, enumerators’ books for 1841 specifically are disappointing. In this year, respondents were required only to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as to whether they were born in Guernsey, and, if not, to state if they were born in ‘England’, ‘Scotland’, ‘Ireland’ or ‘Foreign Parts’. Neither was there space for natives of Channel Islands other than Guernsey to specify where they were from, and, although some did identify their Island of origin, it is possible that others went unidentified.

Matters did, however, improve after 1851, from which point censuses appear accurately to record Channel Islanders under their respective Islands, and to specify the precise national origin of the non-British. Natives of the British Isles nevertheless continued by and large to be recorded simply as nationals of their respective countries.