Visualising Saltaire Census Data (1861-1911) by Northumbria University

This novel and information-rich interactive data visualisation is designed to help researchers and historians explore historical census data from Saltaire—a ‘model’ industrial town in Yorkshire, England—between 1861 and 1911. It reveals insights into human relationships over time, tracing individual ‘life stories’ and changes in household structures, social status, and employment roles during the Victorian era.

At the heart of the visualisation is a series of information-rich ‘household rings’ that illustrate the composition and structure of each home in the town—showing how many people lived there in each census year, their ages, occupations, and relationships. Each individual is represented by a single line, while graphical attributes such as colour, line weight, and circle size encode additional details.

Much like the rings of a tree, these visualisations reveal patterns of change, growth, and prosperity—when individuals arrived or left a household, how their status changed, and how life events such as marriage or death shifted household dynamics. The graphical inflection allows users to see how households expanded, contracted, or even to track how a member of one house became the head of another, perhaps through marriage or death of the house head.

The source dataset consists of approximately 22,500 records, compiled by a dedicated local historian, capturing detailed census information on over 3,000 households—including names, occupations, ages, birthplaces, and relationships to the ‘head’ of the household. A collaborative team of academic and non-academic partners worked to extract, structure, and enhance these records. Additional insights, such as ‘Booth Group’ values—an indicator of occupational social status—were incorporated to enrich the visualisation and deepen the stories that can be uncovered.

To navigate this large dataset into manageable amounts, an initial flow filter allows users to refine the 3,000 households into a more viewable selections. Data can be filtered using various parameters (e.g., Census Year, Number of People or the Gender of Head), which act as ‘sluice gates’ to guide the flow of information. Users can add, refine, and combine filters to explore specific pathways—for example as viewing only households from 1861 with a female head—enabling tailored exploration of household types and social structures.

Interactive features enhance user engagement and exploration. A time slider allows users to filter the visualisation by specific years, with rings appearing and disappearing to focus on particular moments in time. A side panel provides options to highlight individuals based on attributes such as occupation, social status, trade, or Booth Group, enabling a layered exploration of household composition. Person nodes can also be dynamically restructured from ring clusters into hierarchical, family-tree-like formations, revealing deeper relational patterns within households. Animated transitions reinforce these spatial and structural shifts, embedding an
additional layer of meaning through the cross-referencing of layout grammars.

Beyond visual exploration this visualisation tool serves as a foundation for hypothesis formation—offering an initial stage of inquiry that, in later development, will support comparative testing and deeper analysis.