New Thinking: what do we learn from census stats?

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

Everyday lives from the past are often hard to reconstruct. As we prepare for the Census 2021, what stories can we tell from past censuses and the records held at Kew at the National Archives? John Gallagher is joined by four researchers whose work sheds light on women entrepreneurs, the health of residents in Brighton and Hastings, and the story of a house in a suburb of York - Tang Hall.

Dr Carrie Van Lieshout from the Open University is working on a project called A Century of Migrant Businesswomen comparing census figures from 1911 to 2011.

Audrey Collins is Records Specialist in Family History at the National Archives and the author of guides to tracing family history. Dr Deborah Madden from the University of Brighton looks at nineteenth century life writing, at public records and health, and is involved in a project which explores medical archival sources about the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, including oral history interviews with descendants of families affected by that pandemic, and interviews with NHS key workers.

Professor Krista Cowman at the University of Lincoln is researching women’s lives in a number of different contexts: as ‘war brides’ in France during World War One, as campaigners for post-war reconstruction in and out of Parliament in Britain, and in a number of community campaigns for safe play areas in the inter-and post-war period. She has worked on the history of a house in York's Tang Hall.

This episode was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI.

You can find more conversations about New Research in a playlist on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Emma Wallace

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm
0:33.4	John Galaher. On Sunday the 21st of March, a census will be carried out in England,
0:38.9	Wales and Northern Ireland. A census tries to take a snapshot of the nation, and the data it
0:44.4	collects can reveal patterns, debates, and stories of that moment in time. And in this episode
0:50.4	of the New Thinking Strand of the Arts and Ideas podcast, I'm speaking with four researchers
0:55.4	who explore census records to tell stories about everything from public health to historic pubs.
1:01.7	I'm speaking with Dr. Carey van Leeshout of the Open University, Dr. Deborah Madden of the University
1:07.7	of Brighton, Professor Krista Cowman of the University of Lincoln,
1:12.0	and Audrey Collins, who is record specialist in family history at the National Archives.
1:17.5	Hi, everyone.
1:18.4	Hi.
1:19.0	Hi.
1:19.9	So you've all worked with the census as a historical source, and to some people, it can sometimes
1:25.0	seem like a dry collection of statistics.
1:27.8	I wondered if I could ask if you've come across any fascinating historical nuggets in censuses past.
1:34.1	Carrie Van Lee-South, can we start with you?
1:35.7	We found Laura Baumann-Hampton in the 1911 census.
1:39.9	She was a self-employed musical artist, and she came from the USA to London.
1:45.0	And she was one of the first black women to record music, have it recorded on the radio.
1:50.6	Fantastic. Deborah Madden.
	...

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