The Manchester Genealogist

1851 unfilmed census returns for Prestwich -
Migrants from Blackburn, Bolton, Bury and Wigan

The team of transcribers at the Public Record Office, London have almost completed the above returns and will be sending them to Manchester for computer inputting shortly. They will be published some time in 1999. The returns for this area of north Manchester have highlighted a number of entries showing that the head of household was born in one of the four Lancashire towns shown above. This is an exceptionally large number of migrants for what was a very small town of 5,000 people. Clearly the numbers employed in the cotton industry, particularly the bleaching, dying and finishing trades, point to the fact that a number of such factories had been established in the locality in the preceding years and whose owners had "poached" the workers from other towns, generally north of Prestwich.

The name of the heads of households who were born in these towns have been extracted from the returns and are shown below. In addition there are the odd lodger, servant, visitor, etc, who also come from the four areas but are not included in the list. If any member wishes to obtain details of a particular entry in exchange for a donation to the Society, please contact me.

Table 1: 1851 unfilmed census for Prestwich
Public Record Office reference HO 107/2232
List of migrants from Blackburn, Bolton, Bury and Wigan areas

Ray Hulley (1823) Project Coordinator

Location of above entries (not published)

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