The Geography of Old Age in Late-Victorian England and Wales, 1891

This aggregate-level dataset links poor relief data recorded on 1 January 1891 with several variables from corresponding 1891 census data, all at the level of the registration district (RD). Specifically, the numbers of men and women receiving indoor and outdoor relief in the ‘non-able-bodied’ category (taken as a proxy of the numbers of older-age men and women on relief) are accompanied with a series of socio-economic variables calculated from census data on the population aged 60 years and over (our definition of ‘old age’). Thus, the dataset fulfils two objectives: 1. To start reconciling poor relief data from the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers archive with transcribed Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) available at the UK Data Service (UKDS). 2. To capture geographical variations in the proportion of older-age men and women on poor relief as well as in several household, occupational and migratory compositions recorded in the census, consulting data from 1891 as a pilot study in anticipation of an extended project covering all censuses from 1851-1911.