Prologue: the fertility census of 1911 and the professional model of social classes

Summary

With the approach of the census year of 1911, the senior staff of the GRO were to be found making preparations for a massive retrospective survey of the entire nation's marital fertility patterns as an integral part of the forthcoming census. For the first time ever the statutory census duty of every household head in the country was to include a response to questions eliciting detailed information on the number of children everborn and surviving to all extant marriages. Parliament could occasionally be prevailed upon to authorise such exceptional inquiries through the machinery of the nation's decennial census if there was sufficient public anxiety over a topical issue that could be sensibly investigated in this way. Hence, in 1851 there had been an attempt to use the census to assess the proportions of religious adherents of different denominations within the nation; and in 1931 there would be an attempt to assess the incidence of unemployment in different industries, occupations and regions.

In 1911, there was an analogous burning issue, at least among an influential section of the political nation. This was the desire to know the facts concerning recent, apparently alarming changes in the nation's birth rate, and associated variations in fertility between different sections of society. Not, of course, that this was the only object of concern and speculation at this time: there were other issues competing for inclusion on the census form.