2021 will see the next national Census, a ten-yearly event that has been going on since 1841. Like the rest of the country, everyone resident in Maldon district on the night of 6th June 1841 was recorded with their name, gender, age, occupation and address.

This gives us a treasure trove of information, not just for family research but also for insights into the changing social history of our town. This is particularly evident when we look at the age and sex graphs for 1861 and 2011.

So how did Maldon people live? What did they do?

The most obvious thing is shown in the pyramid-shaped 1841 graph, with equal numbers of men and women, and huge numbers of children, with generally diminishing numbers for each age band upwards.

A tiny proportion lived from age 80 and above, and indeed, compared with current figures, relatively few from 65 onwards. Life was hard, and medical interventions for heart attacks, strokes and cancers very limited.

The proportion of children suggests a population explosion, but sadly many of these would not reach adulthood. Large families were common, as was the knowledge that many children would die young. This was much worse in big urban areas with malnourishment, poor sanitation and rampant diseases like smallpox, diphtheria, TB and cholera: in the 1830s in Liverpool, 53% of babies died before they were five, 57% in Preston. Maldon deaths were never on the scale of the urban areas, and some of the 1841 Maldon statistics would represent genuine population growth. However, figures were shocking by modern standards, and a chart for Maldon shows a steep decline in infant deaths from 1860 to 2011.

In the same period, the life expectancy of agricultural labourers was 36 years, while that of industrial workers in big cities was just over half that. The averages are lowered by the dreadful death rate of children: if you made it to 19 or 20, living to your forties or fifties was a reasonable hope.

47% of Maldon residents in 1841 worked the land, less than 3% in 2011. Many would have been able to grow food for themselves, an advantage over city-dwellers.

Around a quarter of the population were employed in "consumer services", not surprising for a market town supplying a wide rural hinterland. This proportion has only slightly increased in modern times.

Interestingly, the figure for workers in manufacturing – 15% - has barely changed in 180 years. For much of this period, Bentall's would have been the chief employer, and their concern for their workers' welfare is evidenced in the houses which still stand in Heybridge. Crittall at Silver End and Bata Shoes at East Tilbury followed suit, but much later.

This year death and serious illness has come far closer than most of us can remember. Terrible though these times are, the figures for 1841 show that we have still come a long way since those times.