Basingstoke Census 1881

The whole of the 1881 census for Basingstoke parish has been transcribed by the New VCH Hampshire volunteers, based in the town. This information will be used for a detailed analysis of the population, households, age, occupations and migration etc. Because of the large number of inhabitants a complete spreadsheet is rather unwieldy so the data has been recorded on separate sheets, one for each of the 11 Districts enumerated. A link to the spreadsheet is below together with the enumerators’ descriptions of their walks around the town.

The total number of people counted on 3rd April 1881 is 6,769 which can be compared with 4,262 residents recorded in 1851, also on line together with comments and analysis:

https://www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk/explore/items/basingstoke-census-1851

It has to be remembered that this is just a snapshot of one night and many inhabitants may have been visitors, lodgers or even away from the town. Further work on the analysis of this data will be published in the future but it is interesting to note the inns (many of which are no longer in existence), employees in the clothing trade, iron foundry, breweries and railway but farmers and agricultural labourers are still evident presumably providing supplies to the town.