Oxford censuses

Censuses in Oxford

Cartoon about the census

Cartoon from “Punch”

Censuses available to view on Ancestry, etc The first four censuses of 1801, 1811, 1821, and 1831 were merely statistical
Year	Sunday night on which census was taken	Reports about the census Published in Jackson's Oxford Journal unless stated otherwise
1841	6/7 June 1841	Three reports about the census, which was then an entirely new concept: (1) Payment of enumerators (2) Process to be followed, with list of Oxford enumerators (3) Problems encountered in the City Oxford
1851	30/31 March 1851	Instructions becoming more bureaucratic
1861	7/8 April 1861	Memorandum on some of the objects and uses of the next day's census
1871	2/3 April 1871	Report on the organization of this census in the City of Oxford
1881	3/4 April 1881	Statistical results of the 1881 City of Oxford census (compared to the city in 1871)
1891	5/6 April 1891	Conduct of the 1891 census in Oxfordshire
1901	31 March/1 April 1901
1911	2/3 April 1911
1921	19 June 1921	This census will contain more detailed information than earlier censuses. It was taken under the Census Act 1920, and hence cannot be released until 2021. Online digitized copies will be released in January 1922.
The 1931 census was destroyed in a fire during the Second World War, and no census was taken in 1941 The National Registration of 29 September 1939 helps to cover the twentieth-century gap and is already available on Ancestry (with names of people likely to be living redacted)

The early censuses were described as an “obtrusive impertinence” by Cuthbert Bede in The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1853):

… but these dates [of birth] we withhold, from a delicate regard to personal feelings, which will be duly appreciated by those who have felt the sacredness of their domestic hearth to be tampered with by the obtrusive impertinences of a census-paper.

Oxford History: The Census

Censuses in Oxford

Censuses available to view on Ancestry, etc