NRS-1273 | 1828 Census: Householders' returns

Full description

Householders’ Returns (NRS 1273)
The individual householder's form records the district, householder's name, residence, names of family and of servants and then for each individual person – age, class, ship and year of arrival, sentence, employment, residence, religion.

On the other side of the form there is a land and stock return which records district where situated, name of farm, name of proprietor or tenant, total number of acres, acres cleared, acres cultivated, and livestock (horses, horned cattle, sheep).

Householders’ returns are not extant for every district. The returns in [4/1238.1-1241] include the following districts: Kissing Point, Concord, Baulkham Hills, Castle Hill, Prospect, Field of Mars, Botany Bay, Holdsworthy, Cabramatta, Liverpool, Cook, Evan, Melville, Bathurst the less, Bathurst, Wellington Valley, Parramatta and Sydney (1 return only).

District Abstracts (NRS 1274) and Working Papers (NRS 1275)
The clerks in the Colonial Secretary’s Office compiled a district abstract for each district which was folded around the householders’ returns for that district. Where these were voluminous there may be several bundles for a district. Within each district’s bundle the forms are roughly arranged by a running number though it appears the small-sized returns have been placed together with the larger returns placed at the end of the district bundle, usually followed by the land and stock return statistics. The clerks also allocated a number to each district which may be noted on the outside of the bundle (such as ‘N2’ for Kissing Point or ‘N37’ for Bathurst), though the number is not included on each householder’s return.

A numbered list for districts 34 to 52 is given on the draft General Abstract for the Colony in [4/1238.2] (filed after Castle Hill) but there is no complete contemporary list of district numbers. The General Abstract for the Colony of New South Wales often combined two or more districts. The district number appears to have been applied by the clerks to faciliate the compilation of the statistics for the General Abstract.

The returns from Government Establishments, such as Iron Gangs and Hospitals, were extracted from their respective districts by the clerks and were filed together (in [4/1238.1]). There are two lists, one of nineteen Government Establishments and the other a ‘General Abstract of the Gangs, &ca to whom Slop Clothing was issued on the 1^st November 1828, to 4033 different Convicts, and others’. These two lists comprise the 1828 Census: Working papers (NRS 1275). Accompanying the second list is a ‘List of Convicts in Government employ and to whom Slop Clothing was issued on the 1^st November 1828’ which lists up to 3933 convicts in 66 pages giving their name and ship in sections indicating their government employment (such as No.1 Iron Gang; Bathurst Road; Parramatta Hospital).

Background
On 30 June 1828 the New South Wales Legislative Council passed ‘An Act for ascertaining the Number Names and Condition of the Inhabitants of the Colony of New South Wales and also the Number of Cattle and the Quantity of located cleared and cultivated Land within the said Colony’, known as the Census Act of 1828 (9 Geo. IV No.5). (1) Magistrates were to affix notices in conspicuous places in their districts ‘requiring every householder employer of servants owner or possessor of cattle proprietor or occupier of land’ to answer the following questions:

What are the respective names ages and conditions of the persons residing with you in your dwelling-house?
What are the respective names ages conditions and residences of all such other persons as may be in your service or employment?
Specify the respective years and ships in and by which all of such aforesaid persons as originally came to the Colony prisoners of the Crown arrived.
What are the respective number of horses horned cattle and sheep of which you are the owner and in whose possession and in what district are the same respectively?
What is the number of acres of land of which you are the proprietor in what district is the same how much thereof is cleared and how much cultivates and in whose possession is the same? (2)

The Act also provided that in the case of refusal or neglect to answer these questions or the giving of false or untrue answers the Magistrates were able to impose a fine not exceeding Ten Pounds. (3)

Printed ‘Instructions for filling up the Returns for the Census of the Year 1828’ dated 1 September 1828 were issued by the Colonial Secretary, Alexander McLeay, together with a circular dated 18 September 1828 specifying the use of printed forms in the taking of the ‘General Census of the Colony’. (4)

UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register
The records of the 1828 Census were inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register on 27 February 2019.

Endnotes
1. Census of 1828 (9 Geo. IV No.5).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Instructions of 1 September 1828 and Circular, 18 September 1828 in NRS 906, Special bundles [Colonial Secretary], 1826: Census of 1828 – instructions, circulars, and samples of forms to be used [4/1097].

Reference
Census of New South Wales – November 1828. Edited by Malcolm R Sainty & Keith A Johnson. Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1980 and subsequently published, with additional information, on CD-ROM 2001 and Revised Edition 2008, Introduction (PDF) ‘Census of New South Wales November 1828, available from Biographical Database of Australia website, https://www.bda-online.org.au/sources/musters-census/ (accessed 22 February 2019).