Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part I - Docent Arvid Edin, Uppsala, The Swedish Church Registers and the Demographical Science
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The weakest point in the Swedish census is, as already indicated, the infor*
mation respecting occupation. With the present highly developed and very chan*
geable specialization of work within all occupations, it is only by means of detail*
ed information supplied by those concerned, in oral conference with an »enu*
merator», that we can obtain a deeper insight into the life of trade, as in any
case was tried in Germany, The indispensable condition for this is a »momentary,
real census». Here a continuous registration of the changes of the population is
plainly not at all sufficient.
In any case one cannot demand that the clergy, whose chief call lies in quite
another sphere of work, should be enjoined to obtain correct details concerning
the occupation of all the inhabitants in their parishes. At the census in 1910 an
attempt was made with the help of the assessments to obtain a somewhat better
material as to occupation than at the previous censuses. In 1910 one also for the
first time worked up the material respecting occupations according to age. An
attempt to arrive at the mortality in different occupations, in different groups of
ages, as is done in England, has not led to any trustworthy result.
Taken as a whole the Swedish census, arranged as it is now, could not be
extended considerably. Thus, for example, returns touching the whole number of
children born in every existing marriage can not be demanded, as they would not
be founded upon current registration. A real census giving all such information,
besides concerning occupations and income, etc., is therefore required and should
be afterwards completed by compulsory introduction of family*registers, as is the
case in Wiirttemberg, i e. the registration of every marriage should be accompanied
by a family bulletin where all the demographical events in the family should be
registered with the same certificate as in the parish registers, and when the family
removes from one parish to another, this bulletin should be transferred as well.
Whereas now — if one is not willing to burden oneself with a practically insur*
mountably difficult work — one can only follow a family during the time its
different members live in the respective parishes, one could by such a means follow
it exactly in detail, even from the time when it was founded. And not least would
the removal registers, an institution peculiar to Sweden, here be of the greatest value.
The keeping of the Swedish parish registers still rests in principle on the
instructions given in the Ecclesiastical Law of 1686. Since that time, in any case,
the keeping of birth, marriage, and death registers seems to have been regularly
practised over the whole kingdom, though in many varying forms. Before that
time such a continuous registration was cönsidered a private matter for the cler*
gyman or in any case an affair that feli upon the bishops and cathedral chapters
to undertake, if they wanted. One of the earliest of such ordinances was issued
in 1608 for the archiepiscopal diocese of Uppsala. Its observance does not seem
to have been worth mentioning. But in the diocese of Västerås, on the contrary,
after a similar ordinance had been issued in 1622 by the renowned Johannes Rud*
heckius, the keeping of the parish registers was pursued, according to a form
which the bishop had printed and provided. Ever since that time the death
registers in that diocese have offered very much of demographical interest, (first
and foremost the information respecting the cause of death, by which means
epidemic diseases can be traced fairly accurately). In any case since the end of
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