Number of entrepreneurs
The BBCE and Atlas make available for the first time a total count of all entrepreneurs 1851-1911 in the censuses, and differentiates them into employers and own account. The Atlas maps give this for each RSD. The BBCE database allows each person to be identified individually.
[Number of entrepreneurs by RSDs in E&W, parishes in Scotland: Source: BBCE]
The tables here give the total for the whole country:
| Year | Employers | Own account | Workers | Total employers and own account | Total economically occupied |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1851 | 446 | 704 | 6,422 | 1,150 | 7,572 |
| 1861 | 451 | 711 | 7,066 | 1,162 | 8,229 |
| 1871 | BBCE data only for 277,000 business proprietors, mainly those giving workforces | ||||
| 1881 | 536 | 953 | 9,517 | 1,489 | 11,006 |
| 1891 | 584 | 1,073 | 10,338 | 1,657 | 11,995 |
| 1901 | 593 | 1,236 | 11,988 | 1,830 | 13,818 |
| 1911 | 742 | 1,138 | 14,149 | 1,879 | 16,028 |
[Source: BBCE tabulations, England and Wales 000s]
| Year | Employers | Own account | Workers | Total employers and own account | Total economically occupied |
| 1851 | 87 | 120 | 981 | 206 | 1,187 |
| 1861 | 84 | 140 | 1,060 | 224 | 1,287 |
| 1871 | 86 | 144 | 1,172 | 230 | 1,402 |
| 1881 | 97 | 140 | 1,334 | 237 | 1,571 |
| 1891 | 957 | 166 | 1,445 | 261 | 1,706 |
| 1901 | 106 | 189 | 1,672 | 295 | 1,968 |
| 1911 | 130 | 174 | 1,637 | 304 | 1,941 |
[Source: BBCE tabulations, Scotland 000s; 1911 from published]
Note that these aggregate counts do not perfectly align with some other researchers (such as Feinstein, Mitchell, or Lee) because definitions vary on what constitutes an entrepreneur, on extent of inclusion of nationalised industries, municipal enterprises and utilities; some researchers count the unemployed among the economically active; there remain ambiguities of how retired and part-time are accounted for; and previous research has not had the individual census records available which now allow new controls on the definitions used.
The census data require various levels of processing to achieve an aligned dataset that is fully representative, and matches modern definitions of entrepreneurship. This is akin to the post-survey processing that a modern census has to undergo before it gives robust results. The main challenges are post-survey processing to manage non-responses to the relevant census questions 1891-1911, data supplementation for 1851-81 for non-responses, because the precise formulation of the questions changed: census questions 1851-1881 . The loss of data from TNA archives also has to be managed, which leads to mismatches between BBCE and I-CeM digital versions and the published tables used by previous researchers (see WP 23). This affects all years, but primarily 1851 and 1861, and to a lesser extent 1901. Comparisons with published for 1891-1911 are given in a Business History paper Table 3, and for 1851-81 in WP 9. There are alternative ways of dealing with these challenges; the methods used in BBCE are fully transparent and can be replicated or adjusted by others: England and Wales and Scotland.