THE COMING CENSUS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11544, 1 December 1900, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE COMING CENSUS.

AN ENUMERATION TO BE MADE ON

MARCH 31 NEXT. Under the direction of the Local Government Board, the Registrar-General and bis able coadjutors at Somerset House are already preparing for the census of the United Kingdom on March 31 next. As it happens, the date falls on a Sunday, and that day has been chosen because most people are at home then. The people of Great Britain — England, Scotland, and —will be counted simultaneously with those of Ireland. In both cases the arrangements are on identical lines, except that Ireland will have a religious census and the rest of the kingdom will not. Preparatory- to the census of ten years ago England and Wales were parcelled out into 34,000 districts, so that, allowing for the growth of the population, the number of districts! next March will fall short of 40,000. Each district will have an enumerator, his duty being to distribute, collect, and copy the householders' schedules. Institutions and establishments holding more than 100 inmates will be specially enumerated, in the majority of cases by the chief resident officers. Appointed about the middle of February, this army of enumerators will be under the immediate control of the local registrars, these in turn being supervised by superintendent registrars. The enumerators will distribute the householders' schedules during the week prior to the census day and collect them on the Monday following. Within a reasonable period the returns must be delivered and revised by the local registrars before being passed on to the superintendent registrars, who in due course transmit them to the Census Office. Summary returns form the basis of a preliminary report, which is succeeded by a general report., and both are in processof time laid before the Houses of Parliament.

When the results of the last census hecame known the fact that the population of England and Wales fell short of the official estimates by nearly three-quarters of a million created quite a sensation, but the random charges of inaccuracy were not substantiated. England and Wales were shown to contain 29,002,525 inhabitants; Scotland, 4,025,647; and Ireland, 4,704,750, making 37,732,922 the total for the United Kingdom). What increase is the forthcoming census likely to establish'! According to the Registrar-General's estimate, the population of England and Wales in July of the present year amounted to 32,091,907, Scotland, 4,313,993, and Ireland, 4,515,471, representing an aggregate of 40,921,371 for the United Kingdom. Seeing that the natural increase of the population amounts roughly to 112,712 every three months, the census of 1901 may be expected to demonstrate that Great Britain and Ireland contain no fewer than 41,259,507 people, or an advance of 3,526,585 since the census of 1891.