the history of the Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent 

     

Population growth 1738-1838 

 

 

Population growth to 1738-1838:
Source: "The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent" John Ward, 1843

 

Population Growth:

 "The rapid advance of the local manufacturers, and the consequent increase of the population, reckoning from about the middle of the 18th Century, have, perhaps, not been surpassed relatively, during the same period, in any of the great trading and manufacturing towns and districts of England.

In the Petition …presented to the House of Commons in 1762, the population of the whole of the Potteries was computed at near seven thousand persons; which we have reason to think was below the real number, for Burslem parish alone contained near three thousand persons at that period, as may be collected from an examination of the Parish Registers; and if we suppose the population of the District generally to have merely doubled within the preceding twenty-five years (which has been about the ratio of its ordinary increase of late) we may venture to set down the number at four thousand a century ago.

The impulse given to the Trade, after the completion of the Grand Trunk Canal, in 1777, produced a rapid advance of the population…. In the year 1785, the late Mr. Josiah Wedgwood … estimated the population employed in, or depending upon, this Manufacture, at from fifteen to twenty thousand persons.

We will take the population within what is now the Borough of Stoke, at the lowest amount mentioned by Mr. Wedgwood at that period and set it down at fifteen thousand persons.

In the year 1801, when the first Parliamentary Census was taken, the population exhibited an increase more than three-fold within the preceding forty years; and a further period of less than forty years has produced almost an equal arithmetical progression, … examination of the parochial returns… sets the total population of the Borough, at the present time (1838) at about sixty-three thousand persons.

 


Table - shewing the population of the Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent, and its progressive increase during a period of 100 years:-

Townships

1738

1762

1785

1801

1811

1821

1831

1838

Tunstall

200

300

500

800

1,677

2,622

3,673

6,608

Burslem, Sneyd and Rushton Grange

1,800

2,800

4,800

6,486

8,478

9,815

12,572

14,486

Hanley and Shelton

1,000

2,000

4,600

7,940

9,568

12,956

16,408

18,249

Penkhull with Boothen, comprising Stoke

300

700

1,400

2,680

3,851

4,915

5,997

6,780

Fenton Vivian, and Fenton Culvert

200

400

700

1,800

2,506

3,000

3,710

4,890

Longton and Lane End

500

1,300

3,000

4,000

4,930

7,100

9,608

11,987

Population:

4,000

7,500

15,000

23,626

31,010

40,408

51,968

63,000

 

 

 
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