 |
A STUDY IN TILBURY (SURNAME) DEMOGRAPHY
Where did our ancestors live? How many were they? |
The Tilbury name is in the less-frequent group. The spelling has varied!
From at least the 16th century they were mostly in south-east England. Online census indexes provide these
approximate numbers by place of residence:
|
1841
ENGLAND: 519 Buckinghamshire: 124; Hampshire: 106; Middlesex: 97; Surrey: 42; Berkshire: 29; Essex: 1. Hampshire: 13; Berkshire: 8. Hampshire: 15. (WALES: 0) |
1861
ENGLAND: 901 Buckinghamshire: 251; Hampshire: 191; Middlesex: 206; Surrey: 64; Berkshire: 10; Essex: 8. WALES, Tilbery: 2 |
||
| * Mostly Tilbury by late 19th century.
|
|||
| |||
| 1901
ENGLAND: 1,639 Buckinghamshire: 237; Hampshire, Hants, Southampton: 56 + 48 + 139 = 243; Middlesex: 11; London: 300; Surrey: 120; Berkshire: 43; Essex: 51 Sussex: 32; Kent: 21; Hertfordshire: 15; Suffolk: 11 WALES: 15 |
|||
|
Approximate Rate of Increase 1841 : 1861 = 174% 1861 : 1891 = 159% 1891 : 1901 = 114% i.e. in 60 years the number of enumerated Tilburys only tripled |
|||
|
—————— SCOTLAND —————— | |||
| 1871
1881 |
1891
Aberdeenshire: 6; Dumfriesshire: 2 1901 | ||
There were OVER 40 VARIANTS of the Tilbury name in the 19th century!!
THE MAY 1998 STUDY
In January to June 1875 there were 29 Tilbury births in the UK.
Tilbury entries taken from the Somerset House Register of Births for 1875
Child's given-names followed by registration district
| JANUARY to MARCH 1875 | APRIL to JUNE 1875 | ||
|
1. Arthur, Wokingham
2. Charles, Kensington 3. Daniel, Winchester 4. Emma, Edmonton 5. Frederick Walter, Petersfield 6. Gertrude Anne, Hackney 7. Isabel Blanch, Alverstoke 8. Janey, Amersham 9. Lilian Mabel, Kingston 10. William Henry, Manchester |
1. Alfred, Henley
2. Alice, Eton 3. Alice Mary, St. Pancras 4. Amy Maud, St. Saviour 5. Ann Sophia, Cookham 6. Annie Louise, High Wycombe 7. Charles, St. Saviour 8. Charles Percy, Hendon 9. Edith Rose, Lambeth |
10. Frank, Pontypridd
11. Geoffrey William, St. Albans 12. Harriet, Chelsea 13. Laura Margaret, High Wycombe 14. Louisa Selina, Droxford 15. Reginald George C., Lambeth 16. Richard, Fulham 17. Sidney Levi, Hambledon 18. Thomas, Henley | |
It is reasonable to assume that there are some Grandchildren of the above who are still alive?
Of these, 3 (Annie Louise, Laura Margaret & an un-named boy) were in High Wycombe; 13 more were in the West London area.
120 years ago High Wycombe could not have been a large place. It must have been rural. The Directory for Bucks, High Wycombe area for 1847-1850 showed the following (tradesmen whose income enabled the listing):
- Tilbury, James, Blacksmith, Newland
- Tilbury, William, General Smith, Crown Lane
- Tilbury, Frederick, Farmer, Little Plomer, West Wycombe
- Tilbury, M., Farmer, Little Missenden (full forename not given)
- Tilbury, R., Beer Seller, Little Missenden (full forename not given)
I have always been aware that the High Wycombe, Basingstoke, Surrey area was a Tilbury 'hotspot'. There appear to be more of them in the B.T. Wycombe & District 'phone book than in any other book.
This report describes the methodology and results of some recent research into the distribution of Tilburys in the UK.
INTRODUCTION
The UK 'phone books now [May 1998] have residential numbers in a separate section from businesses. It was decided to use this facility to derive a very rough picture of the distribution of Tilburys in England, Scotland & Wales. Other, more accurate sources are confidential. 'Phone books are available to everyone!
This method has several built-in sources of inaccuracy:
- As many as 60 percent of subscribers in some areas are ex-directory.
- Many people only have mobile 'phones which are not in the book.
- The BT books include numbers for other communication operators but not all.
- The areas covered by some books overlap. e.g. Most of the Norfolk Tilburys appear in the book for N. Norfolk as well as the book for S. Norfolk. Same problem with cities such as Birmingham, where people living in the city centre also appear in the suburbs books.
- There may well be some Tilburys who have no 'phones.
The above must be borne in mind when interpreting the data.
In order to locate 'hotspots', etc., The proportion of Tilburys in the population was used rather than the actual number. The areas and number of subscribers covered by 'phone books varies greatly. A simple head count would be misleading.
METHODOLOGY
Data was collected from 140 books (excluding the 23 London Community books which are covered also by the Outer London books (105 - 109))
In order to establish the proportion of subscribers who are Tilburys, The number of whole pages holding residential numbers was recorded for each book, together with the number of Tilbury subscibers (if any).
By sampling 10 pages at random from several books it was found that the average number of entries per 'phone book page is 496.
It was then a simple matter to calculate the number of Tilbury entries per 100,000 to the nearest whole number.
535 Tilbury entries were found altogether. 50 books had no Tilburys.
RESULTS
DATA
RATIO of Tilbury entries in BT 'phone books
PER 100,000
|
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MAP
|
The MAP shows a coloured disc placed at the approximate centre of each 'phone book area. See the key on the map for colour codes. In densely populated areas the discs overlap In N.E. Scotland the disc is placed somewhere near the centre of the area and shows one Tilbury subscriber somewhere in that area - NOT where the disc is placed!. Areas where there were NO Tilbury entries, no disc is shown. |
|
DISCUSSION
- In the mid 19th C. there were certainly several Tilbury families in the Southampton/Portsmouth area, as well as the cluster West of London. Although there are records of some Tilburys thinly spread elsewhere, I have no firm evidence of there being any in the area N. of London towards Bedford, Luton, Milton Keynes, etc.
Was there a movement into the new housing & industrial areas at start of 20th C.? - The clusters along the Sussex coast may be due to individual families retiring there? I believe William Tilbury (No 52 on table) moved there about 1930 ?
- From the 535 total entries it is interesting to surmise how many Tilburys there may be in the UK.
Taking into account that many people with mobiles also have a fixed line but some only have a mobile, that perhaps there another 250 are ex-directory(?), that only very few don't have a phone, there may be around 900 subscribers in all ?
If we make a wild guess that each 'phone associates with three individuals, there could be about 2700 Tilburys? (All complicated, of course by women changing surnames on marriage, etc., etc.......!
Anyone else got any more wild ideas??
John Tilbury of Nottingham
Ken McCrea has also done a Tilbury distribution map for the UK. Although he didn't find so many Tilburys the pattern is very similar.
The red lines show 1974 county boundary changes.
Ken McCrea worked on UK postcodes obtained from the people finder index at
http://www.192.com.
Ken is at http://GermanNames.com
Using as data source: "Surnames, England & Wales, National Statistics 2002" the One Name Study website ranking method gives this result:
| Surname | Count | Ranking |
| TILBURY | 2196 | = 3394 |
Advice from the source website: multiply the result by 0.93 to obtain a more accurate approximation of living (Tilburys) in the UK.
| 2196 x 0.93 = 2042 |
| in year 2002 |
