I regret to inform you that Egg-merchant and Dealers, Lunatic Keepers, Bee Dealers, Ice Dealers and Well-Sinkers have sadly disappeared from Britain!
Some interesting findings have been released by Ancestry.co.uk regarding professions that can be traced in the 1841 census, or soon after, that were then compared with current UK employment data in the 2010 Labour Force Survey.
According to Ancestry.co.uk, whose site is one of several that hosts a UK Census Collection:
“ ‘Teacher’ is the occupation that has grown the most in popularity, with the number of teachers employed increasing by an enormous 131,000 per cent between 1841 and 2010 – in real numbers from 1,105 to 1,449,000.
Next are journalists, increasing by 42,000 per cent (520 people to 217,000) between 1841 and 1901, while the number of builders has increased by 9,000 per cent (9,188 people to 821,000).
Other professions that have also grown in popularity range from high flying stockbrokers, dentists, accountants, medical professionals and solicitors to the more modest builders and hairdressers. Even the much maligned estate agents have shot up in number by 748 per cent since the 1840s.”
Do you remember when, as a child, we would say “When I grow up I want to be a…” and we would name a job or profession we fancied?
So, do you think that these statistics show us that not enough children hankered after being a Bee Dealer, an Ice Dealer, an Egg Merchant? And can we also assume that many probably said “I’m going to be anything but a Lunatic Keeper”?
I wonder what people will have put down, as an occupation in the recent census, that in a hundred and seventy years will have disappeared from Britain in 2181?
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