Killashandra 1841 Census Dashboard

Visualise 1841 census data for Killashandra – Literacy Levels, Children’s Education, Life Expectancy. Compare results for individual townlands versus the entire parish. See a further explanation of each chart below the dashboard.


Literacy Levels in Adult Population

This chart examines the Education data for those aged 12 and over. Households were asked to enter for each occupant “Read”, “Read and Write” or “Cannot Read”. The actual responses were much more numerous than these three possibilities, but we derived one of the three possible values from the given response. (A small proportion – 1% – of values could not be ascertained and were designated “Unknown” and omitted from the chart above).

Occupation of Children Age 4-12

This chart examines the Occupation data for children aged from 4-12. Households were asked to enter the occupation of each occupant, or in the case of children, to say whether they attended school. We reduced the responses to three possible values –

  • Student – if it was clear that the child was at school
  • No Education – if there was no response for the child
  • Working – if there was a response that indicated a trade or some other form of work
Life Expectancy from Birth

This chart examines the Life Expectancy from birth. Households were asked to name all the occupants who had died since the last census, including their year of death and age at which they died. The histogram plots the number of people who died at each age from birth (0) to 104. Incredibly, one Sidney Wilson from Ticosker died at the age of 104. Cause of Death – “Old age”. Sadly, he was one of the very few lucky ones as average life expectancy from birth was extremely low – just under 30 years of age, with a median of 20.

Life Expectancy from Age 5

Infant mortality contributed greatly to the very low life expectancy. The final chart plots the age of death for all persons over the age of 5. Results are still very poor with the data showing that for those who survived at least the first five years, their life expectancy was still only 45, with a median of 46. But please bear in mind that these figure show the life expectancy of those who were already dead and not the expectancy of anyone born in 1841. However, the average age of those alive at the time was only 23 years.

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