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DIALOGUE Issue #6 2021
Portrait of John Rickman by Samuel Lane c.1831
JOHN RICKMAN (1771-1840): OG AND CREATOR OF THE UK CENSUS By Vincent Tickner OG 1966
In the 1801 census the Royal Grammar School, Guildford was listed as having 41 males and 7 females at the time, the females probably being either servants or family members of Rev Samuel Cole, who was Schoolmaster of the school from 1769 to 1804. Few people may know, however, that John Rickman (1771-1840), who was largely responsible for the first censuses from 1801 to 1841, had been a pupil at the RGS. John Rickman was born in Newburn, Northumberland on August 22, 1771, the son of a clergyman, the Rev Thomas Rickman, who was descended from an old Hampshire family. John was
educated at the RGS from 1779 at least, and went up to Magdalen College, Oxford in 1788 but was thereafter at Lincoln College, from which he graduated with a BA in 1792. After that, for some time, he ran the Commercial, Agricultural and Manufacturer’s Magazine. The study of the population was one of the major concerns of political economy at the time. In 1796 Rickman wrote a paper indicating that it would be administratively easier and more costeffective to take a census of the population than the enumeration methods previously used. George Rose, MP for Christchurch, Hampshire showed this to Charles Abbot MP for Helston
