Where did they go? The Cornish generation of 1850

Back in the mists of time – around 20 years ago – I began a long-term research project aiming to study the migration patterns of a single Cornish generation at a detailed individual level. It was based on a systematic sample of all children born in Cornwall in 1850 and still alive in 1861. The census of 1861 was chosen rather than 1851 to avoid the effects of the appallingly high infant and child mortality of the time and the poorer quality of the civil registration data before the 1860s. (More on the methodology and the project can be found here.)

Of the 4,136 children studied, 77.8 per cent have been traced to their 40s or their deaths, whichever came first. It’s most encouraging to note that this proportion is very similar for men and for women. For men 78 per cent were found, for women 77.6 per cent, despite the difficulties caused by change of name on marriage.

What had happened to our Cornish cohort by the time they were 40 years old in 1890? Of the near 80 per cent traced around a fifth had not survived, this proportion being two or three percentage points higher for men than for women. But clearly, a considerable proportion of those untraced will also have died before 1891. This is more likely to be the case for women who both married and died in the years between the decennial censuses and for single migrants.

If we ignore the dead for now, we’re left with 2,557 traced survivors. Where were they in 1891? Around a half were still in Cornwall. Meanwhile, a quarter had moved to other locations in the British Isles while a fifth had ended up overseas. This last proportion will be an underestimate as single men and women who migrated are much more likely to be lost from the records.

The biggest differences by gender are perhaps not unexpected. While men and women were equally likely to have gone to other places in the UK women were less likely to be found overseas and more likely to be still in Cornwall. About one in six of the female children born in 1850 had emigrated by 1891 compared with one in four of the males.