Dan Snow's History Hit - War, Women and the 1921 Census

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

After World War One women outnumbered men by the highest margin in recorded history, even compared to after World War Two. This had wide-reaching implications for the social, demographic and economic fabric of post-war society.Today Dan is joined by Mary McKee and Paul Nixon from Findmypast to explore: What does the 1921 Census reveal about the impact of the First World War for Britain?Are you interested in exploring your own family history? After years spent digitising and transcribing this unique record of your recent history, the 1921 Census is now available exclusively online with Findmypast. Start exploring now at findmypast.co.uk.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I have been enjoying the release of the 1921 census very much. Every 10 years the British government, since 1801, has taken a census of the British population. The 1921 census though is a special treat because we're not going to get another one for years. One was destroyed and the other one didn't get conducted because of the war. So if you like censuses, whatever the plural of that is, this is your last chance to get stuck into one until 2052. And so to mark this occasion, we've done a few podcasts about the census, and we've got another one coming up now. We're going to talk about women in particular, because it's International Women's Day when this podcast is first broadcast. We are going to look in particular at what the census tells us about women. Never before or since in Britain have there been so many women compared to men. So terrible were

the losses of the trenches, of the battles at sea in the desert, East Africa, the mountains of Italy and elsewhere, that there were now 1,096 women in the UK for every thousand men. It was an imbalance. It was something they talked about a lot at the time. So we're going to talk about a little bit now. What's it all mean? We've got Mary McKee. She's Find My Past's women's history expert. And we've got Paul Nixon. He's the Find My Past military history expert. So these are the two perfect people to have on don't forget the 1921 census is now available exclusively online with findmypast.co.uk if you want to listen to previous podcasts on about the census you can head over to history hit tv you get to listen to them without the ads just follow the link in the information of this podcast but in the meantime folks enjoy paul nixon and mary

mckee telling us all about women, World War I, and the years that followed. Paul and Mary, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Hi, Dan. Great to be here. Hello. Good to meet you, Dan. I mean, the 1921 census is so interesting. A lot of people talking about, is this our chance to see the impact of the First World War? And we've all been looking at families and residences and buildings. What are some of the

big takeaways, do you think, in particular around this issue of women? There's never been so many women compared to men in Britain. It's fascinating. One of the first statistics that you see coming out of the 1921 census is the number of women compared to men. There's 1.7 million more women to men. And it's the largest difference in the two sexes since the beginning of the census in 1841. And even up to today, you don't see that high of a difference. We don't even see that high of a difference after the Second World War. So I think that's one of the biggest ways to see the impact of war. And then there's other statistics that we can look at as well. But going back to the 1.7 million women, after the census was taken, you had the statistics were released to the public, just in the same way that

we have with our census today. But these 1.7 million became known as the surplus women. The press really ate it up with these numbers and started to create a bit of a frenzy around this, about what would happen to the women who wouldn't be able to marry because of all the men that were lost in the war. And it's interesting to watch this kind of debate in the contemporary newspapers where some charities are even sponsoring women to go abroad and try and marry men abroad, where other newspaper accounts are saying, actually, is this a moment now for us to re-evaluate women in the workplace and women in the economy? Or is this an additional labor force

that we should look at? All kind of quite practical, right? We're not thinking about trauma or isolation. We're just going like, maybe these women can be sent abroad or maybe they can be used to work harder. Like, you know, okay, cool. Whatever works. Paul, what about what we know about the First World War, how the demographics of that loss of life affected British society? How many Brits never came home?

Over 700,000 from the British Empire. If you look at the soldiers died in the First World War, you have a million empire men, tremendous numbers of men. I think 1921 for me, looking at the census and reflecting on it myself, I get the sense that it's a country getting to grips with the war and coping with what the war has left. The legacies of men who were injured, blinded, disabled, who were still suffering in 1921. I'm old enough to have had a grandfather who served in the First World War. When he died in 1980, I regretted very much not having spoken to him more about his war service. And I then set out

as an 18-year-old on my bike, cycling the streets of Essex, looking for First World War men. It was one of those bizarre things that I've done in my life, but I was so glad I did it because I met so many men and interviewed them. And I'm now looking, finding those men in the 1921 census. And one man I interviewed lost his leg at Bowman Hamill in 1916. I interviewed him three days after my 19th birthday. He was 89 then. So there were 70 years between us. And I found him in 1921 census. In 1921, he's in a hospital. He's in a surgical hospital in Hammersmith, still having treatment for his wound. I hadn't realized. I mean, you hear these stories, you listen to the men talking to you about their experience and you think, okay, they got wounded. They went back home. They got patched up. They just carried on with life. But

here he is five years later, still an inpatient in a hospital having treatment. Paul, I just want to say, there are some people that would look back on that eccentric teenager and think you're a bit strange. But here you are among friends, buddy. And I'm very glad that you bicycled the streets of Essex looking because that is exactly what young history fans should be doing. So well done you. And yeah, I guess this is a key thing. Can we get any sense from the census of obviously those men who didn't come home and the so-called surplus women, but also huge numbers of men that were coming home and had terrible debilitating mental and physical problems. Funnily enough, Dan, just this morning, a 1914-15 star dropped through my letterbox, which I won on eBay over the weekend, to a St Dunstaner, a man who was blinded in July

1916. And he went to St Dunstan's. St. Dunstan's was all about teaching men how to be blind. It was teaching them new trades. And you do find this. I mean, this particular individual whose medal I bought appears on the census as unemployed, not working, no trade, blind, in brackets. And he died in 1926. I haven't yet pulled his death certificate, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was related to his war injury. But you do see other men in the census who, obviously, before the war, were not soldiers, they were civilians, they were doing labouring jobs or working as gardeners or whatever they were doing, carpenters, and then blinded and were then learning new trades. So you see them in the 1921 census doing completely different things, working as basket

weavers, working as masseurs, working as tobacconists, all these trades that St Dunstan's taught the men, they're out there learning new trades and earning their livings as blinded ex-servicemen. Yeah, what I found incredible in the 1921 census is searching it and seeing the thousands of men that have actually recorded themselves as disabled soldier. The census never asked about infirmity or ability or anything like that, but they are actively providing that information to say that they are a disabled soldier. And I think bringing it back to the role of women after the war as well, I mean, there's often caring roles now. A woman may

have a son who was disabled from the war and her husband has passed as well. So now she's a widow taking care of somebody. There's one particular census return where we saw a woman has written additional notes in the forum to say that she is taking care of her nephew who lost his hip during the war. And she actually continues to say that she's struggling because there's been a rise in her taxes. And how dare you raise my taxes while I'm taking care of this man and you sit there. And I think she used the phrase was, well, you continue to night men who sit in velvet chairs. So you can see the anger and the frustration of the population. And like you said, Dan, the trauma of the first

world war on the population as well. Wow. I mean, that's a, that's an extraordinary story and extraordinary comment to have there in that sense. What a wonderful thing to find. Speaking of these new families, I mean, is there a sense of families living without the young man, living without the father? Is there anything you can gain from the census around society reshaped in any way? I think there definitely is. I mean, you see children either recorded as orphans. I mean, the stark facts are 360,000 children lost their fathers. Now, many of those mothers would have remarried. So you find children with new fathers and the census wouldn't necessarily record in that case that they'd lost their father, because if there was a stepfather

in the column that says both parents still alive, it would say in that case, yes, they are both still alive because the stepfather was assumed to have supplanted the father. So there would be no reference to the dead father. But you do see this. You see families readjusting. You see either widows struggling on with their children and not remarrying or remarrying and then new fathers for those children. So it's a complete reshaping and readjustment of society after the First World War. It's a complete reshaping and readjustment of society after the First World War.

I think also looking at families, you also see that the size of the average family is decreasing. And what the Registrar General put this down to was there was a decrease of the average family size of about 5%. And what they considered it could be is a combination of the factors of there was a rise in the number of marriages before the war. But then if you combine that with the lower birth rates, the number of children below the age of four has never been lower than since 1881 at this point. So there's such a low birth rate during the war years. And then combine that with the number of men who died in the war. So the average household is decreasing then and the size of families. But also looking at the way that war impacted the families, one thing that I found was really interesting. I started looking at children with the names related to battles. So if you look at children that were

born in 1915, there's about 60 or so of them with the name Verdun, whether it's their first name or their second name. But by 1916, there's over 1300 children with that name. And so it's a unique way that families actually tried to honor the dead in the family of using these battle names in the naming of a child. Wow. That's a fascinating little thread that you're pulling on there. What about divorce? Because 1921, you hear about divorce. Is this connected with the war? Is this just an ongoing social movement? census, we can see there's over 16,000 people have recorded themselves as divorced. But again, I love going back to the official records and always taking a look at that to try and understand more about these numbers that we're reading. And because the census was administered by the Registrar General, the General Register Office, they also had access then to the divorce

applications and the applications for individuals being remarried. And what they found is actually the divorce number in the census is lower than it should have been, which means people weren't accurately recording their marital status. Maybe they were saying that they were single or married. Maybe it was because of a social stigma that they weren't answering that correctly to say that they were divorced. But another unique feature of the census, because now on Find My Past, we have the household census forms that you can see, we can see what people thought about divorce. So people added their opinions. One person wrote that they were in favor of divorce law reforms, which would have made equal laws between men and women who were applying for divorce. And then

others did not want divorce to go any further. One person called it a curse on the country. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. I'm talking about the 1921 census, women and war. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries.

The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions.

And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaking of cursing on the country, it was tough times in 1921. There was the economic dislocation that follows war. Did that also, and I guess, of course, women leaving war work that they had been performing, what does the census tell us about that? The kind of bumpy transition back to some kind of non-war economy?

Well, coming out of the war, we have the 1919 Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act. And what that was encouraging was for women to leave the factory so men could resume their roles. So we do see about 25% of the women working in factories do leave directly after the war. So that makes it a little bit more difficult when we look at 1921 to establish how many women went into war work and items like that, because many women are now leaving the factories at this point. But we do see some shifts in the dynamic in women's employment. So there is a decrease in the number of domestic servants. In 1901, there's 1.45 million domestic servants, but by 1911, there's 1.3. So we can see a slight decline. And actually the War Cabinet Committee on Women in

Industry reviewed this. And what they believed was that because of the work that women contributed during the war, they actually had a new gained sense of freedom. They wanted a higher salary. They wanted shorter working hours. And if you're a domestic servant, you are in the household at all times. So I think the war definitely started to give women that idea of freedom and that idea of opportunity as well, that you could change the role that you were born into. Paul, what about women actually doing the war work? And many women served in uniform in various war and war adjacent activities. How many of them remained in uniform by 1921? That's a good question, Dan. I mean, of course, the storage of the VADs is well known,

the voluntary detachments, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, women working in various branches overseas. I'm not sure of the figures after the war ended, but certainly those women played vital roles during the war and took the places of the men who were out doing the fighting. To Mary's point about women taking control, another interesting story for you, which may often be overlooked as well, and that's the change in names. You have people with German names being anglicised. And again, from a recent purchase and some research I've done on a family named Klein, K-L-E-I-N.

Now, the father was a German Jew. His family settled in Essex. They were quite a good sailing family. They're in newspapers as winning various regattas and all the rest of it. Obviously, quite competent sailors. In 1914, the two brothers joined the Royal Naval Division and go to France, go to Belgium in 1914, and are promptly interned for straying into Holland, spend the rest of the war in a prison camp. And meanwhile, their sister back in the UK has the name changed, changes it from Klein, K-L-E-I-N to C-L-Y-N-E. So she's the driver.

She's taking the decision to change the name, gets their permission from the camps in Holland, and that appears in the London Gazette and the name is changed. And of course, she was in good company there because her own royal family changed their name in name is changed. And of course, she was in good company there, because her own royal family changed their name in 1917 as well to Windsor, so she was in good company. Good point. Talk to me about, Mary, what the other women taking a bit more control in their lives. We start to see in the early 1920s, women entering the professions, Oxford and Cambridge, stuff like that. We see the first election in 1918, which some women were able to vote in Britain. Any of that coming through in

the census? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're totally right. I mean, it is such a radical and interesting time for women in the 1920s. Like you said, a new generation of women that have the right to vote. By 1922, we will see the divorce legislation change. We see changes in birth control and a change to the marriage bar, and then a change with the law around sex discrimination in 1919, which allowed more women to then enter the professional occupation. So we start to see now in 1921, we can see the names of some of the first female barristers and doctors and lawyers. And we see a lot more women in this professional role. And it isn't a massive increase by 1921.

We're not talking about high numbers of women. We're talking between 50 to 100,000 women. But we can see the steady increase then in women in more of a professional role. For example, talking about the First World War and the women that worked and that contributed to the war effort. So you have Dame Helen Gwen Vaughan, who commanded the Wrens, the Women's Royal Air Force. And in 1921, she's the first female professor at Birkbeck College. And we can see now her occupation as she recorded it was a professor of botany. So it's really a fascinating time for women.

Paul, as a military historian, this is a peacetime census, I guess. Is it still just fascination for you? Yes, it is because of the personal connection I have with these men, as I say. And also, it's very stark seeing those lists of men in the institutions. St. Dunstan's is well known to all of us. It's now blind veterans and does sterling work for today's blinded soldiers. But back then it was St Dunstan's and I knew they were in Regent's Park, but they had annexes all over the country.

So you see these lists of men learning trades. They're based in Hertfordshire. They're based down in Sussex. They're based in London. Ian Fraser, who was the chairman of St Dunstan's for 50 years, he's an administrator in 1921. So Arthur Pearson, who was a newspaper publisher, he published Pearson's Weekly and many other papers, he went blind in later life due to glaucoma. And it was his efforts that set about forming St Dunstan's. By the end of 1921, he would be dead. He stepped into his bath, slipped on something in the bath, and knocked himself out and drowned in his bath. It's a tragic end. But his end saw Ian Fraser

promoted to chairman. And Fraser, who'd been blinded on the Somme in July 1916 as an 18-year-old, then took over the range of St. Dunstan's and really steered it through. So all that's fascinating to me because you see Ian Fraser, as I say, as an administrator, newly married. His wife was the VAD nurse who came to see him as a newly blinded officer in his bed in London Hospital. He remembered feeling her glove as she reached her hand out, how soft the leather was of her glove. And that's his abiding memory. And they married and then the rest is history for him. And under his stewardship, St. Dunstan's went from strength to strength. But it's seeing those men, looking at them in those lists, looking at what they were

doing before the First World War, and then looking at them, then readjusting now, doing these new trades that I just find fascinating. And I've only really scratched the surface. I was saying to someone the other day, I'd only just started looking at 1911 census, let alone 1921, which has just come along. So it's going to take me another decade or two. It'll see me out, I think, Dan. So there's plenty more to do there.

Well, sadly, you're not going to have any more sentences for a while, right? Exactly. Yeah, well, 2052. So I should be 90 by then. So let's see. I've got plenty to do in the meantime. Because obviously, 1931 was destroyed and 1941 was not conducted because of the war. So we've got 30 years before the next one.

Correct. Yeah, long wait. So Mary, what about looking ahead for the 1920s and the trajectory of women in this country? What seeds are you seeing in this census that will go on and develop in fascinating ways through the rest of the decade? I think not only for women, but the population in general. We're seeing a population that has been changed because of the war, because of the, not only the impact of the trauma of losing so many people, but the relationship with government and bureaucracy at this point. And we

see that because what I've seen is it's a much more vocal kind of population. And we see that in the sense it's the way that people use it to write their protests and their annoyances in the records. So we have people that are talking about the housing crisis and talking about divorce law reform. We have some men that are annoyed about women entering the workforce because there's such a high level of unemployment. In 1921, we have a few individuals added to their forms about how in some roles girls were kept on, where boys were made redundant. Another individual wrote how that they were annoyed about women enumerators coming to the house to collect the forms from unemployed ex-servicemen.

And they wrote this onto the form. I think adding all this together, it's a really interesting look into the lives of individuals coming out of the war and in those interwar years. It's a period of history that's sometimes overlooked. You know, we study First World War and we study Second World War so much, but what happened in between and what happened to that generation in between? So having the 1921 census on by my pass, it means that we have a much more robust way to search these records and to understand more about the population. And then we've got babies being born in this census who will provide the young

men and women that would fight in the Second World War. So thought-provoking for some of those youngsters that I'm sure you'll come across in the census as well. How can people search it for themselves? Tell us. Well, they can go to findmypast.co.uk, register with Find My Past. And then if you can't find the link to 1921 Cents on Find My Past homepage at the moment, you're doing something very wrong. It's all over the site.

Just register with Find My Past and follow the links. Lovely. Thank you very much, both of you, for coming on. Thanks for inviting us. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast. I love doing these podcasts.

It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done. And your support, your listening is obviously crucial for that project. If you did feel like doing me a favor, if you go to wherever you get your podcasts and give it a review, give it a rating, obviously a good one, ideally, then that would be fantastic and feel free to share it. We obviously depend on listeners,

depend on more and more people finding out about it, depend on good reviews to keep the listeners coming in. Really appreciate it. Thank you.