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average 13,000 burials a year he concluded there were about 12,000 christenings—'I
therefore esteemed the number of teeming-women to be 24,000: then I imagined, that
there might be twice as many families, as of such women; for that there might be
twice as many women aged between 16 and 76 as between 16 and 40 and that
there were about eight persons in a family, one with another, viz., the man and his wife,
three children and three servants or lodgers: now eight times 48,000 makes 384,000
His second estimate was done on a sampling basis. He found that,' in some parishes
within the walls, that three out of eleven families per annum have died: wherefore
13,000 having died on the whole, it should follow there were 48,000 families
Lastly he took a map and guessed that in 100 yards square there might be about
54 families. On this basis there would be 11,880 families within the walls' But forasmuch
as there die within the walls about 3,200 per annum, and in the whole 13,000; it follows,
that the housing within the walls is ¼part of the whole, and consequently, that there
are 47,520 families in and about London
He summarised the situation as follows' We have (though perhaps too much at
random) determined the number of the inhabitants of London to be about 384,000;
the which being granted we assert that 199,112 are males and 184,886 females(The
assertion was based on the observation of the sex differential in both deaths and christenings.)
In an appendix to his observations, Graunt refers to the problem once again as he
had by then procured an account of the number of men, women and children in several
wards and liberties of London taken in August 1631, by special command from the
Right Honourable the Lords of His Majesty's Privy Council. The figure amounted to
130,178. There was thus a census in ' London ' much earlier than 1801—the date usually
associated in the minds of most people with the first census. (Ogle also gives details of
a census taken in the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle on Lady Day, 1733.)
Not content with this cross check, Graunt compared the number of deaths per week
in Dublin and in London. On the basis of the ratio of the estimated population of
London to its deaths, he concluded that the population of Dublin at that time would
have been about 30,000 and this agreed with the numbers actually ascertained for the
purposes of raising poll money.
Despite the care and comparative success of Graunt's researches doubts have been
cast on the accuracy of this estimate by later workers in this field such as Rickman.
The latter showed that it would be easy and useful to take a census of the population,
as a result he became secretary to Lord Colchester and together they prepared the first
Census Act in 1801. Rickman was the man mainly responsible for the early censuses
and he prepared the reports for the first four. He was also particularly interested in
making calculations of the population during the 18th century.
It has always been difficult to estimate the population of London for, even in the
Middle Ages, London had spread out beyond the City walls and across the river to
Southwark, so that by the 18th century the population was spread between the Counties
of Middlesex and Surrey. As in the 20th century the County of London only represents
a fraction of the metropolis so the Bills of mortality of the 18th century only dealt with
a portion of the whole. In the Parish Register Abstract of the Census (1811), p. 199,
Rickman explains how he estimated the population. In essence he applied the ratio of
population to baptisms known to exist in 1801 to the figures of baptisms in earlier years—
in fact the baptism figures were averaged over the five years preceding the year for which
the population was estimated.
So far as London was concerned Rickman applied the same technique though
difficulties arose because some of the parishes which formed part of the ' City of London
without the walls' extended beyond this area and hence it was necessary to apportion
the estimated increase in population.
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