Two households in Coundon, County Durham

Explore the census entries for two households living in Coundon in County Durham in 1851. Compare their places of birth, their relations to the head of household and occupations by selecting the different features. Discover how to interpret this information and what the data can reveal.

	Thomas head married 46   joiner Durham, Cockfield Elizabeth wife married 48   Durham, Chapel in Weardale Thomas son unmarr 24   coalminer Durham, Chapel in Weardale John son unmarr 21   coalminer Durham, Cockfield Elizabeth dau unmarr 19   at home Durham, Cockfield Esther dau unmarr 17   at home Durham, Ramshaw Matthew son 14   work in coalmine Durham, Ramshaw Charles son 12   screen boy Durham, Coxhoe Joseph son 9   at home Durham, Coxhoe Mary Ann dau 6   at home Durham, Coxhoe Hannah son 4   at home Durham, Chilton Moses son 1   Durham, New Coundon
	Age The Garthwaites, a coal-mining family, have ten children still at home, their ages ranging from 24 to 1 year. Contrast this with the Coopers who have 'only' six children living with them. Elizabeth Garthwaite had her youngest child when she was 47 - an advanced age but not uncommon at that time. The children are spaced at two to three year intervals. Medical research shows that breast-feeding acts as a natural contraceptive, reducing the chances of a woman conceiving until the child is weaned. In this period, breast-feeding of children to the age of two was very common among the poor and the working class and this helped to 'space' childbirth, although it did not really help with family planning in the modern sense.
	Looking closer Elizabeth Garthwaite, aged 48, had experienced a quarter of a century of continuous child-bearing. Of these children (and we could ask whether there might have been others, who had died in infancy or had already left home), the four eldest sons were working in the collieries. This must have represented a valuable element in the household income. The others, including the older girls, were 'at home' without formal employment, although they must have assisted their mother in running a large family. In the mid-19th century, employment for women and girls was becoming more restricted by legislation (for example, after 1842 women were not allowed to work underground in coal-mining and the employment of children was gradually being limited in the same way). In areas such as Lancashire and Yorkshire (the main textile regions of Great Britain), female employment was readily available because a high proportion of the spinners and weavers in the woolllen and cotton industries were women. In more prosperous parts of the country and in the affluent suburbs of individual towns, there was plenty of employment for girls and women in domestic service. But in coal-mining districts, engineering districts, ship-building towns and iron and steel towns, the industries rarely employed women and wealth was not sufficient to provide extensive employment in domestic service. Only in the later 19th century did this pattern begin to change, when women and girls began to work in ever-greater numbers in shops, in offices (as typists and clerks) and in occupations such as school-teaching.