Redundancy, the ‘Surplus Woman’ Problem, and the British Census, 1851–1861

In 1851, a question about marital status on the British census sparked concern about the decline of the family as the moral and reproductive basis of British society, and triggered the debate about the ‘surplus woman’ problem. The debate can usefully be viewed in the context of larger nineteenth‐century discourses about population, surplus, nation, and empire. This article uses the background of the census in order to place the surplus woman problem in such a larger context. The census, concerned as it was with population, proportions of people, and national strength, allowed British people to view single women who were not reproducing as one among many unproductive groups within the nation.