PAP 026

The Poet and The Paupers

VI.026


On May 28^th of that year, 1821, Richard and farmer John Knight rode round Chiddingly and between them visited every household to record those details of the parish’s population required by the third national, ten-year census. If later census-taking practices in the parish are a guide, then John Knight covered its north-eastern half and Richard its south-western, with the tiny River Cuckmere as the dividing line between their territories. Having collected and collated the information “in accordance with an Act of Parliament”, they forwarded their returns to Somerset House in London, where they were incorporated with those from every other parish in the country to present a statistical picture of the population of England and Wales; and that, for the enumerators in most parishes, was that – their duty had been done. Not, though, in Chiddingly; for Richard Lower, being the sort of man he was – energetic, meticulous, with a sense of historical occasion and ever willing to display his skill as a calligrapher – wrote the whole Chiddingly census out again, in an elegant copyhand complete with curlicues and flourishes, in a small, hard-covered notebook, purchased probably from Reuben Lower, kinsman, fellow Dissenter and stationer at 5 High Street, Lewes. Richard’s little book, now preserved in the East Sussex County Records Office at Pelham House in Lewes, is a unique document. No other Sussex parish has anything like it, and few, if any, elsewhere; not, at least for 1821. The Official Census Report for that year gives only general totals, not individual details: so many houses, so many males, so many females and so on. Richard’s book identifies every individual in Chiddingly on May 28^th, 1821, by name, address,age, occupation and relationship to others living in the same household. These were his neighbours and some of them liked music. Including his own family – from which Martha Oxley was absent as on Census Day she was staying with her grandparents in either Alfriston or Heathfield – there were eight hundred and seventy people in Chiddingly on Census Day: four hundred and sixty-five males and four hundred and five females. They were, on average, poorer than the population of a modern Sussex parish, for a quarter were paupers on some form or other of parish relief. They were also younger, as is shown by the breakdown into age groups that Richard prepared:

On May 28^th of that year, 1821, Richard and farmer John Knight rode round Chiddingly and between them visited every household to record those details of the parish’s population required by the third national, ten-year census. If later census-taking practices in the parish are a guide, then John Knight covered its north-eastern half and Richard its south-western, with the tiny River Cuckmere as the dividing line between their territories.

Having collected and collated the information “in accordance with an Act of Parliament”, they forwarded their returns to Somerset House in London, where they were incorporated with those from every other parish in the country to present a statistical picture of the population of England and Wales; and that, for the enumerators in most parishes, was that – their duty had been done. Not, though, in Chiddingly; for Richard Lower, being the sort of man he was – energetic, meticulous, with a sense of historical occasion and ever willing to display his skill as a calligrapher – wrote the whole Chiddingly census out again, in an elegant copyhand complete with curlicues and flourishes, in a small, hard-covered notebook, purchased probably from Reuben Lower, kinsman, fellow Dissenter and stationer at 5 High Street, Lewes.

Richard’s little book, now preserved in the East Sussex County Records Office at Pelham House in Lewes, is a unique document. No other Sussex parish has anything like it, and few, if any, elsewhere; not, at least for 1821. The Official Census Report for that year gives only general totals, not individual details: so many houses, so many males, so many females and so on. Richard’s book identifies every individual in Chiddingly on May 28^th, 1821, by name, address,age, occupation and relationship to others living in the same household. These were his neighbours and some of them liked music.

Including his own family – from which Martha Oxley was absent as on Census Day she was staying with her grandparents in either Alfriston or Heathfield – there were eight hundred and seventy people in Chiddingly on Census Day: four hundred and sixty-five males and four hundred and five females. They were, on average, poorer than the population of a modern Sussex parish, for a quarter were paupers on some form or other of parish relief. They were also younger, as is shown by the breakdown into age groups that Richard prepared:

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