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Hello. This is 6 Minute English
from BBC Learning English. I’m Neil.
And I’m Sam.
In recent years, many people have
wanted to find out more about where
they come from. Millions have tried
to trace their family history and
discover how their ancestors
lived hundreds of years ago.
The internet has made it much
easier to find historical
documents and records about
your family history - and one
of the most useful documents
for doing this is the census.
A census is an official count of
all the people living in a country.
It collects information about a
country’s population and is usually
carried out by the government.
In Britain, a census has been
carried out every ten years since 1801.
In 2002, when census records from a
hundred years before became available
online, so many people rushed to
their computers to access them
that the website crashed!
But before we find out more about
the census and its related vocabulary
it’s time for a quiz question, Sam.
Someone who knows a lot about his
family history is British actor,
Danny Dyer. When BBC television
programme Who Do You Think You Are?
researched his family history they
discovered that the actor was
related to someone very
famous – but who was it?
A) King Edward III,
B) William Shakespeare, or
C) Winston Churchill
Well, I know Danny Dyer usually
plays tough-guy characters so
maybe it’s C), war hero
Winston Churchill.
OK, Sam, we’ll find out later
if that’s correct. Now, although
the first British census took
place in 1801, other censuses
have a much longer history. In fact,
the bible story of Mary and Joseph
travelling to Bethlehem is
linked to a Roman census.
So, what was the original reason
for counting people and what did
governments hope to achieve by
doing so? Here’s Dr Kathrin Levitan,
author of a book on the cultural
history of the census, speaking to
BBC World Service programme,
The Forum:
I think there were probably two
most common reasons. One was in order
to figure out who could fight in wars,
so basically military conscription
and in order to find out who could
fight in wars ancient governments like
the Roman Empire had to find out
how many men of a certain age
there were. And I would say that
the other thing that censuses were
most commonly used for was
for purposes of taxation.
According to Kathrin Levitan,
ancient censuses were used to
figure out – or understand, how
many men were available
to fight wars.
The Roman Empire needed a
strong army, and this depended
on conscription – forcing
people to become soldiers
and join the army.
The other main reason for
taking a census was taxation –
the system of taxing people a
certain amount of money to be
paid to the government
for public services.
Ancient and early modern
censuses were large and
difficult-to-organise projects.
They often involved government
officials going from house
to house, asking questions
about the people who lived there.
But over time governments’ desire
to know about, and control, its
citizens gave rise to new
technologies for counting people.
Here’s statistician and economist
Andrew Whitby explaining how this
happened in the US to BBC World
Service programme, The Forum:
The 1890 census of the United States
was the first in which some kind of
electro-mechanical process was used
to count people… so instead of just
armies of clerks reading off
census schedules and tabulating
these things by hand, for the first
time an individual census record
would be punched onto a card… so
that there were holes in this card
representing different
characteristics of the person and
then those cards could
be fed through a machine.
Old-fashioned censuses were
managed by clerks – office workers
whose job involved keeping records.
Thousands of clerks would record
the information gathered in the
census and tabulate it, in other
words, show the information in
the form of a table with
rows and columns.
The US census of 1890 was the
first to use machines, and many
censuses today are electronically
updated to record new trends
and shifts in populations
as they happen.
In fact, so much personal
information is now freely
available through social media
and the internet that some
people have questioned the
need for having a
census at all.
Yes, it isn’t hard to find out
about someone famous,
like a TV star.
Someone like Danny Dyer, you mean?
Right. In my quiz question I
asked Sam which historical
figure TV actor, Danny Dyer,
was related to.
And I said it was C) Winston
Churchill. Was I right?
It was a good guess, Sam, but
the actual answer was A) King
Edward III. And no-one was
more surprised that he was
related to royalty than the
EastEnders actor himself!
OK, Neil, let’s recap the
vocabulary from this programme
about the census - the official
counting of a nation’s population.
To figure something out
means to understand it.
The Romans used conscription
to force men to join
the army by law.
Taxation is the government’s
system of taxing people to
pay for public services.
A clerk is an office worker
whose job involves keeping records.
And tabulate means show information
in the form of a table
with rows and columns.
That’s all for our six-minute
look at the census, but if we’ve
whetted your appetite for more
why not check out the whole
episode – it’s available now on
the website of BBC World
Service programme, The Forum.
Bye for now!
Bye bye.