Page 12 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

By the time of the 1861 census, the format was more or less established and hence the 1861 census looks very much like other subsequent censuses.
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The provision of a fairly reliable census means that the need for speculation is much less. One can, in other words, take what is on offer in a fairly direct way. It provides a snapshot of the Soothills in England and Wales on the census day. One can work out the age structure, the number of households, the marital status of the respondents, and even their occupations. Perhaps more significantly, one can identify their various residences and recognise how, almost without exception, those using the name of Soothill are based in the north of England.
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Chapter 1 starts at 1861 and then takes us through the next fifty years. As I recount, there are some shifts, both geographically and perhaps in social mobility. In short, some of the Soothills are moving up in the world and living elsewhere, while the bulk of the tribe still remains in the north of England where the vast majority had lived in 1861.
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There is a backcloth of broader changes in England over these five decades. Forty of the fifty years covered in this chapter coincide with the last forty years of Queen Victoria’s reign, while the last decade fits neatly in the period known as Edwardian England following the ascent of Edward VII to the throne after his mother’s death in 1901.
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Chapter 2 covers the next fifty years starting with the 1911 Census. George V had been King since 1911. In 1937, following the abortive reign of Edward VIII who abdicated over his insistence on marrying the divorced Wallis Simpson, his brother, George VI, became King for the next sixteen years until his daughter Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1953.
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More important than a brief recital of the monarchs who were reigning is to recognise the backcloth of national and, indeed, international events during this
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