Census, comprehensive survey
In 1801 the first detailed UK-wide survey was carried out. Schoolmasters and local Overseers of the Poor went from house to house gathering information on household numbers, occupations, baptisms, marriages and burials. The Domesday Books compiled in 1086 were the first formal count in the islands which became the United Kingdom, but it covered only England Wales and mainly concerned taxable situations. The Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807, and did not provide specifically for such a census; various British Museum Acts have been passed (from 1753 to 1963) but none in 1800; the Burial of drowned persons Act was passed in 1808 and provided for unclaimed bodies of dead persons coming ashore from the sea to be interred in consecrated ground in the parish where they landed.