I have been looking at a trial of the 1911 census. Not all counties were released in the trial but there were sufficient to make out some patterns in the distribution of families. The figures in the table below show numbers of individuals. The totals were calculated by the website, not by me.

whatmore-dist-1911.jpg

My interpretation of the data is that it shows two main groups of Whatmores and Watmores.

The first group is distributed across Shropshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire. This mirrors movement out of Shropshire shown in earlier censuses, into the counties to the south and west and into Birmingham.

The second group is distributed across Hampshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey and Sussex.

The Watmore and Whatmore families in London and Middlesex could have come from anywhere.

Of the counties yet to be released I would expect to see substantial numbers of Whatmore and Watmore families in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, with a few in Cheshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire where the spelling ‘Watmough’ has always predominated.