Anyone else feeling ripped off by 1921 census?

Elegran whereabouts on the BMD page is the link to the actual transcriptions/ transcripts? I’ve been using it for years and have never found that link.

Oopsadaisy1. Click on the spectacles beside the FreeBMD entry.

Sorry oakdryad, Elegran I misunderstood, I thought you meant the actual birth certificate, I’ve seen the typewritten ones.

I did add a post to say that it was the index, but I think you were busy searching BMD just then. You don't see the actual certificate without shelling out for it, but from the index you can get a few clues (registration place, approximate date within 3 months, spouses surname) and a reference for ordering the certificate, plus a look at a scan of the index page, which may reveal if it was transcribed wrongly.. It used to be a bit cheaper if you could quote the reference, but I don't know whether that is still true.

Free BMD is just a searchable database which draws together all the data which used to be in the big old ledgers that were held at records offices and that you had to search manually page by page. Volunteer transcribers are sent pages from the ledgers to transcribe.

Looking at the original scan can be helpful if you think that despite the double keying, an error may have occurred. A common one is when you click on the page number for a marriage and find there is an odd number of entries. That's usually because there's a discrepancy in the volume OR page number. A further search on the quarter, registration district and either volume OR page number will usually find the missing name.

I have bought the 1921 scans and it was great to see my ancestor's handwriting. However it has to be put correctly to be found by the search function. I did find my grandparents but I don't know how as there were so many errors. Anyone trying to find an address in the village of North Cave won't find it. In the search my family's address came up as 'Thorpe' instead of North Cave. The parish is called North Cave and Everthorpe with Drewton. That just looks to me like not taking care. All quite clear to read when I got the scan. I have notified fmp.

Oopsadaisy1

Sorry oakdryad, Elegran I misunderstood, I thought you meant the actual birth certificate, I’ve seen the typewritten ones.

As I said, the actual birth and death certificates will never be available online and especially not free. They contain personal information and it's right they should be ordered individually and paid for. Would you like your birth certificate available online for anyone to see? I wouldn't.

Chestnut

Oopsadaisy1

Sorry oakdryad, Elegran I misunderstood, I thought you meant the actual birth certificate, I’ve seen the typewritten ones.

As I said, the actual birth and death certificates will never be available online and especially not free. They contain personal information and it's right they should be ordered individually and paid for. Would you like your birth certificate available online for anyone to see? I wouldn't.

I realise this, I was thrown by the poster saying that you could see the ‘actual’ transcripts. Of course I had seen the typed pages before.
I have purchased many many Birth and Marriage certificates over the years, all for Ancestors.
Scotlands People, for a fee, will allow you to see the original Certificates online that you can print off.

Not the "actual transcripts". "You can also follow a link from the transcript to a scan of the actual page" A scan of the actual page in the index, as the transcriber saw it, so you can compare what was in the original printed version with what the transcriber was seeing and thought they were transcribing.

That is as close as you get to the primary source without paying for a copy of the actual certificate or seeing the original parish register (or a photocopy of it) in a Family History Centre. If the original index page has an ink-blot over the entry you want, and the transcriber hasn't found a way round it, then that may be your next route.

There used to be a site where people passed on unwanted certificates, so there is a possibility that someone has your relative there. That was twenty years ago, Sorry, I forget its URL.

Ilovecheese

I don't know where you live Sarnia but in Manchester the central library are giving free access to the 1921 census on their terminals.

That's ironic. It is Manchester history that I am researching but I live in Surrey! Thanks for the info.

PS. If you think searching the transcribed or printed indexes is full of problems, just wait until you get far enough back to search the photocopied handwritten indexes (some of them in beautiful clear copperplate, but others in a faded scrawl) or the parish notebooks of earlier generations, cramped entries in ancient handwriting, listing fathers but not mothers (miracle births?), births within a few months to several identical couples with the same names (duplication when baby was baptised? Cousins born to cousins who themselves were named after parents or grandparents?)

On most of the old parish registers the parson/vicar never thought to put the baby's date of birth, unimportant! Or the mother's name of course. But I've seen some where they've put quite detailed information, date of child's birth and baptism, name of parents and even what family they were from! That vicar was someone who actually understood that they were recording important information about a person's identity. If only they were all like that.

In my own generation I have a lot of cousins. Many of them have Christian names to honour a beloved grandmother (male and female versions of the name) and a lot of the following generations have that name included too. At least for most of them it is a middle name, and they are known by their first name.

At a great-great-grandparent level I found half-a-dozen boys baptised William within a few years of each other, with the same surname and born on the same farm. I had already discovered that twentyfive years or so later two of the Williams from that farm married two Anns in the same church in a neighbouring parish - luckily not in a double wedding. I managed to work out which was an ancestor of mine by tracing the parents of the two Anns. One pair were Charles and Margaret - the first four children of my William were Sarah, Thomas, Margaret and Charles, and the parents of one of the Williams turned out to be Thomas and Sarah. You have to be a bit of a detective.

I am glad my mother was brave enough to crawl back in the ruins of the first house we had bombed during the London Blitz and saved one or two documents, which includes my paternal grandma and granddads original wedding certificate, dated 1897 when they got wed on Christmas Day of that year.
Apart from a few other documents and photos.

I found my ex husband's birth certificate on another family tree. I did not have it so had a look. A little research confirmed this was someone I suspected he had an affair with many years ago, one of many actually. There appear to be three children from this relationship which I did not know about. I was not surprised but beware. You may find out things you did not really expect or want to know.

The censuses are public records and belong to us all. Previous censuses have been transcribed without such an expensive song and dance. Monopolies are frowned upon because they enable to charge what they like.
I pay for Ancestry monthly, and would happily pay for FindMyPast monthly, but not if I have to then pay again to access the records. It does sound like a joke.