1841 Census Return for the household of Samuel Bull

Hypothesis

In the 1841 England Census, a Samuel Bull is enumerated with his wife Ellen living in the Parish of Sutton-on-the-Hill, Derbyshire [Figure 1]. It is likely that these people are Samuel Bull and Helena Millward.

Research

The information recorded has been assessed to determine the likelihood of the hypothesis being accurate.

Location

The residential location of “Cropper Lane Ends” is consistent with other recorded residential locations for Samuel and his family, despite the general confusion around locations in this Parish. Baptism registrations of his sons John in 1816, and Joseph in 1821, show the family living at “Crop way Top”, and in his Will in 1846, Samuel lists his freehold property at “Lane ends”.

Names

Samuel’s name is consistent between all known records. However, his wife was recorded with multiple similar names: Helena, Elleanor and Ellen. The first two, Helena and Elleanor, were most likely alternate spellings of the same phonetic name, made by different priests between her baptism and marriage records. This is supported by the fact that she was unable to write, as revealed on her marriage registration [Figure 2]. Following her marriage, it appears that she dropped the final syllable of her name, resulting in the name of Ellen. This was used consistently until her death.

Ages

The instruction to enumerators in the 1841 Census was to round ages down to the nearest five years for adults [1]. Although followed inconsistently, the majority of people recorded as 45 years of age would have been between 45 and 49 years old.

With this in mind, an age of 45 years for both Samuel and Ellen would place their year of birth between Abt. 1792 and 1796. This matches their birth dates known from other records of Abt. 1792.

Occupation

The most inconsistent fact on this record is Samuel’s occupation, which is shown as “Publican”. On every other known source, Samuel’s occupation is consistently shown as “Labourer”. This includes the baptism registration of his youngest son Joseph twenty years earlier in 1821, and his Will, written by him five years later in 1846.

Given the time period of 25 years, it is not inconceivable, however, that he spent some time running a Public House in this period. Although no other records have been found to support this, we know from his Will that he was the owner of freehold property in Cropper, Derbyshire, in 1846. It is therefore possible that he ran a Public House from his property.

Possible Alternatives

We know that both Samuel & Ellen were alive in 1841, as there are records of their death at later dates (and for Ellen, a later census return in 1851).

The enumeration books for the Parish of Sutton-on-the-Hill have also been manually searched for other households that could be a match, however none have been found. There is also no evidence of missing pages in these enumeration books.

Outcome

Further research into Publicans or Victuallers licences at the Derbyshire Records Office may help corroborate the unexpected occupation. However, based on other factors it seems likely this is the correct census record.