Lies, damned lies and statistics

While reading someone else’s newspaper on the tube this morning (always so much more interesting than one’s own), I noticed a headline suggesting that there are more centenarians around than ever before. Having a few years ago attended my grandmother’s 100th birthday (no telegram nowadays – the birthday boy or girl gets a card with a nice picture of Her Majesty on it), I thought I’d see how many people over 100 there are in Britain.

First port of call was the Westminster Libraries Gateway and the section on Statistics & Figures. Clicking on the link for the Office for National Statistics, I found, on the front page, an article on centenarians – apparently the number in the UK has more than quadrupled from 2,600 in 1981 to 11,600 in 2009. By 2033, there should be more than 80,000 which will certainly keep the Buckingham Palace post-room busy!.

I decided to have a browse around the site to see what else of interest I could find. The Neighbourhood Statistics (click on the link at the top of the ONS site) are always worth a look as they give you the area information from the last Census. Putting in the postcode of Marylebone Library I find that in 2001 there were 1254 people (out of 10,669) with a limiting long-term illness and compare this to the rest of Westminster, the rest of London and the rest of the country. I can find out about housing, crime, employment and religion (sadly, there are no Jedis in Marylebone) and more. Of course, this information is now 10 years old – for more recent figures for Westminster, go back to the Statistics & Figures Gateway page and choose Westminster Facts and Figures for more up-to-date local statistics, though not with the full range that the census figures have.

Of course, another census is coming up next year. If you want to find out more about this (and how you can earn some extra money either in Westminster or your home borough), go back to the Statistics & Figures page on the Gateway and check out the 2011 census link in the ONS section. There’s a lot of fascinating information there – who knew they’ve had test runs in 2007 and 2009?

The census, of course, has been going for more than 150 years. Personal details don’t become fully available for 100 years or so but it’s invaluable for checking up what your ancestors were up to in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. There are two sources of census transcripts – both available for free at a PC in a Westminster Library. From the Gateway, choose Family History and you have the option of using either FindMyPast or Ancestry (both of which are probably familiar from TV ads). The recommendation from Treasure Hunt Towers is that you use FindMyPast for searching the census simply because the nice folks there have typed up all the written entries making it a lot easier to read. You can also search by address – it can be sobering to see quite how many people crammed into a small Victorian house. If you search FindMyPast, you will need a username and password which should be available at the library enquiry desk.

So, back to my centenarian grandmother. She had the rare distinction of appearing on a census (1901) and still being alive when it was published a hundred years later. Checking, I find that she lived in Great Ormond Street (probably a bit less fancy than it sounds), that her father was a fruiterer, she had a mother, a slightly older sister and there was a no doubt very-overworked 18-year-old servant. I then had a look at who was living at the same address in previous years and discovered that in 1881 there was (among others) there was Jacob Dixon, medical professor, Mary Dixon, who gave her profession as ‘medical professor wife’, William Godden, Professor of Music and Philip Williams, a library attendant at the British Museum.

So why not have a look for yourselves. Even if, like me, you have a family of monumental dullness, you may be able to share in the reflected glory of having somebody rather more interesting having lived in the same house!