Census in pictures: from suffragettes to arms protesters

2011: The public are asked questions about their jobs, health, education and ethnic background and must base all answers on who is in their household on Sunday 27 March. The form is compulsory, but a question about religion is optional Photograph: Dean Murray / Rex Features/Dean Murray / Rex Features

1086: 'Strip' farming in West Field, in the North Nottinghamshire village of Laxton, England's last open field village, where the Domesday entry suggests that the villagers were probably cultivating over 700 acres of arable land. The Census we know today didn't start until 1801 Photograph: Don McPhee/Collect/Guardian

1861: The Census, Punch, 20 April. Photograph: British Library Board/The British Library

1861 census form Photograph: National Archives

1881: A census form reproduced as a table mat. The columns are illustrated with figures of people in various stages of life. Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

1901: Extract from a copy of the 1901 census, listing Charlie Chaplin as a music hall artiste. Photograph: PA

1901: Extract from a copy of the 1901 census, listing cricketer WG Grace. Photograph: PA

1911: Suffragettes boycotting the 1911 census. The 1911 protest certainly galvanised women across the nation into action. Sonia Lambert writes that: "horse-drawn caravans drew up on Wimbledon Common carrying women who were to spend the night away from home to boycott the 1911 census. With signs proclaiming 'If women don't count, neither shall they be counted', the suffragettes enjoyed a picnic of roast fowl, sweetmeats and tea. The same night, Emily Wilding Davison – famous for her death on the racetrack two years later – was sustained by meat lozenges and lime juice as she hid in a broom cupboard in the Houses of Parliament" Photograph: National Archives

1911: Suffragettes gathered in Manchester Census Lodge to Boycott the census Photograph: Guardian

1911: votes for women protestors campaigned by defacing their forms and boycotting the census. Photograph: National Archives

1931: Machines take all the accumulated figures and produce the final statistics Photograph: Fox Photos/Getty Images

1939: An enumerator explains a census form to an elderly woman. Because of the Second World War, there was no census in 1941. However, following the passage into law of the National Registration Act the population count was carried out on 29 September 1939. The resulting National Register was later used to develop the NHS Central Register. Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORB

1951: A member of the 'British Housewives League' burning her identity card and census form outside the House of Commons during a protest against man-made food shortages. Photograph: Ron Case/Getty Images

1951: Julie Wilson, star of the show 'Kiss Me Kate', finds time to fill in her census form as she potters about her kitchen. Photograph: Getty

1951: Homeless men give their details for the Census at the Camberwell Reception Centre in London. Photograph: Daily Mail / Rex Features/Daily Mail / Rex Features

1961: Why a Census? General Register Office and Central Office of Information Photograph: British Library Board/The British Library

1971: With the statue of Sir Francis Drake in the backgraound, Sue Rogers, 26, protests on Plymouth Hoe in a gesture against the 1971 census form Photograph: PA/PA Archive/Press Association Ima

1971: The Burning Of Census Forms In Trafalgar Square By Young Liberals Ron Hollis, Brian Milton and Sue Rogers. Photograph: James Gray / Associated Newspape/James Gray / Associated Newspape

1991: Census taker Rosmary Linker at work on a London housing estate. Photograph: GRAHAM TURNER/Guardian

2001: Numbers showing the population of the United Kingdom according to the 2001 census. The figure was about one million smaller than estimates had shown in mid-2000, and country by country the figures were: England 49,138,831 (83.6% of total population); Scotland 5,062,011 (8.6%); Wales 2,903,085 (4.9%); Northern Ireland 1,685,267 (2.9%). Photograph: Matthew Fearn/PA Archive/Press Association Ima

2001 Jedi Knights couple John Wilkinson and Charlotte Law - aka Umada and YunYun, with Chewbacca. Jedi Knights religion deliver a letter to the UN in 2006, calling for recognition of the UK's fourth largest religion - according to the results of 2001 census. Photograph: Tony Kyriacou / Rex Features/Tony Kyriacou / Rex Features

2011: Campaigners stage a protest against the census, the counting of which has been outsourced to a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. London Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/Other

2011: Posters from the British Humanist Association were banned Photograph: Public Domain

2011: Spot, Patricia and Rabbit launch the Petplan Pet Census 2011. For pets, not people Photograph: Geoff Caddick/PA