Search results

The search results page will give you a list of people who have the name you seek, eg a search for Murphy without any first name, townland/street, age or sex will produce a list of all Murphys in Dublin city and county in 1901 or 1911, of whom there were a lot. The list will give you first name, age, sex, townland/street, DED and county for each individual. You can sort the list in alphabetic or numeric order under any of these headings. If one of them looks promising, click on their first name, and you will be brought to the next stage.

Residents of a house in...

This page will give you details of the household you are seeking, with name, age and sex for each member of the household. You can then move to the census return image for this household by clicking on View census images. See Images for further details on viewing, navigation and printing.

The forms listed below the occupants of the household are as follows:

A form

This is the basic household return, filled in and signed by the head of the household. There is one for each household in the country. The information sought was: name, age, sex, relationship to head of the household, religion, occupation, marital status and county or country of birth.

The census also records an individual's ability to read or write and ability to speak the Irish language, and whether deaf, dumb, blind, idiot, imbecile or lunatic.

The 1911 census asked a significant additional question: married women were required to state the number of years they had been married, the number of their children born alive and the number still living.

The back of the form, also available on this website, gives the head of household and its address. In some cases, where forms were filled out in Irish, the name of the head of household appears in English on the back of the form. This name has also been indexed, and appears on the list of residents. The back of the form is available to view under Form A, page 2.

B1 form

House and Building Return: this form gives you details of the houses and buildings in a townland/street, includibng what kind of building (private dwelling, factory, shop etc.), what class of building, how many families lived in each house, how many people lived in how many rooms, and name of head of household. This form is very useful for the examination of urban overcrowding.

B2 form

Return of Out-Offices and Farm-Steadings: this form tells you what extra buildings are attached to a dwelling, for example, stables, coach houses, cow houses, dairies, piggeries, barns etc. This form gives an idea of the full extent of a person's property.

N form

The Enumerator's abstract: this form gives details of the number of houses in a street or townland, and the number of occupants of each house, broken down by sex. The form also tells you the religious denominations present in each household.

Institutional and shipping forms

These forms contain details of the occupants of institutions of different kinds, for example, barracks, workhouses, hospitals, colleges, orphanages etc. In many cases the names of occupants are only given in initial form, ie Mary Smith is entered as M.S. These names are indexed by initial, and hopefully the information in the form itself (county of birth, occupation, marital status) will help to identify the person sought.

The forms are as follows:

  • Form B3: Shipping return.
  • Form E: Workhouse return.
  • Form F: Hospital return.
  • Form G: College and Boarding-School return.
  • Form H: Barrack return.
  • Form I: Return of Idiots and Lunatics in institutions.
  • Form K: Prison return.
  • Form C: Return of the sick at their own homes.
  • Form D: Return of lunatics and idiots not in institutions.

Occupants of a street/townland

The Residents of a Household page, which you get to from a person search, will have, above the list of occupants, what are known as “breadcrumbs”
e.g. Home / 1901 or 1911 / All counties / Dublin / Arran Quay / Oxmantown Road/ Residents of a house.

By clicking on the street (Oxmantown Rd.) or DED (Arran Quay), you can get back to a list of surnames on the street, or streets/townlands in the DED, and look at neighbours on the street/ townland, or occupants of nearby streets/townlands.