On the evening of 8 October 2025 we were pleased to host Dr. Brian Gurrin at the Lalor centre. Brian, who works on the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland project, provided a review of the history of census-taking in Wicklow. The census enumerators collected information about all persons, irrespective of gender, location, age, education, occupation or rank. For this reason census-taking can be seen as the first gathering of information on a truly democratic basis by the modern state.
We learned that a religious census of Ireland was taken in 1766. The first statutory census commenced in 1813 although names were not required to be returned – only numbers. The next census in 1821 gathered the names of every single person in every location in Ireland and showed that there were 6.8 million inhabitants on the island. These records were bound in 479 massive volumes of which only 4 survived the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland located in the Four Courts in 1922 at the beginning of the Irish Civil War. Another less detailed census followed in 1831. The 1841 census was the first to be self-enumerated – the population at the time was reckoned at 8.2 million, the highest ever recorded in Ireland. Following the catastrophic impacts of the famine, the population had fallen to 6.55 million according to the 1851 census.
Other censuses were taken in the years 1861, 1871, 1881 and 1891. Save for some very limited localised and random exceptions, the majority of the transcripts for the years 1831 to 1891 inclusive were either not retained or destroyed in 1922. Complete census records for 1901 and 1911 are now freely available online. The 1926 census records will become available to the public in April 2026. We thank Brian Gurrin for his fascinating lecture and wish him every success in his ongoing work.
The extant census records for 1831 to 1891 inclusive are available in The Virtual Record Treasury and are being continuously supplemented through the digitising of copies and fragments of transcripts available from other repositories and from individuals.
To access the Census records held in the Virtual Record Treasury visit https://virtualtreasury.ie/. Then select Browse the Treasury, select Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, Select VRTI CEN Census of Ireland 1766 to 1891. The layered structure will allow you to access records at different levels through year, province, county, barony, civil parish to townland.
Photo: Dr. Brian Gurrin, Census Specialist, The Virtual Record Treasury