ABSTRACT
The conduct of the latest census in Britain in 2011 and the passage of 100 years allowing release of enumerator’s records from the 1911 Census together offer an unprecedented opportunity for examining patterns of local-scale demographic and socio-economic differentiation and change over time. However, it remains impossible to examine these types of differentiation at the household, address and individual scales other than by means of modelling census data with information from sample surveys. This chapter reports on research that has captured and georeferenced historical census records from the 1901 and 1911 Censuses to their residential addresses in a sample of areas of the old London and Middlesex counties. The persistence or otherwise of geodemographic patterns has been explored by combining and aggregating these historical records with contemporary aggregate census data. Starting with an introduction that compares historical and modern censuses in terms of their conduct, content and geographies, this chapter examines the methods employed to geocode historical census records to current georeferencing systems. Using selected examples of social and demographic attributes common to censuses over this 100-year period, the results of analysis aggregating historical census records to 2001 and 2011 output area boundaries are presented. The chapter concludes by heralding the potential for future research combining historical and contemporary census data as the twenty-first century unfolds, but also cautions whether possible changes to the ways in which censuses are conducted and their very existence will prevent social science researchers from undertaking equivalent studies 100 years from now.
