1921 Census release today

Have you tried possible transcription errors? I eventually found a relative in 1911 by working out that 'rn' could be mis-transcribed as 'm'. There he was. The results online are only as good as the transcribers and I've come across some real horrors in a census transcribed in India. I don't know who transcribed the 1921 census.

I love family history and I have compiled quite a list of ancestors to try to fill in a few more gaps. I tend to get a lot of queries ready then take out a 3 month membership on a certain website and get cracking.

Chestnut

The 1921 census was 19th June so how does that fit with your other 1921 dates?

My uncle was born in January 1921 and I'm not sure of the date of the electoral role. My father was born in Surbiton in 1924, so they must have moved some time between 1921 and 1924. My grandfather was the only person ever to have had his name. I know his dob, so I searched for that with name variants too, but nothing. Strange!

This is the house where he lived in Hampstead. My guess is that he rented a flat and maybe moved because it wasn't suitable for a baby, but I can't find the new address.

unlike many of the trees online, many of which are complete fairy tales with nothing to back them up. I once saw my grandmother married to a complete stranger before she was even born.
AreWeThereYet yes at least half the Ancestry trees are complete nonsense and it can drive you crazy looking at them. There are so many lazy researchers (well they are not researchers at all actually) and then more lazy ones come along and take it all from their tree thus duplicating the errors over and over again.

AreWeThereYet and Chestnut

Yes, it can be very funny but extremely annoying too and these people won't listen if you do point out an obvious error. In fact, some are published online separately from the research sites.

I did, however, find a photo of my Great-Grandmother which was posted online, just by typing her name in the browser.

Yes, some of the transcription errors are astonishing. A whole family living at one address but with three different surnames because they were transcribed incorrectly.

Some people dodged the census. I’ve had that with Irish people in Scotland who evidently didn’t trust the authorities.
Can you find your grandmother or any other relatives on that side growstuff?

I have a 2 x great grandfather who somehow skipped about three censuses. Very odd because his family were there but he plays the invisible man. I have no idea why or how. Maybe your ancestors decided they didn't want to be in the census, or maybe the page was damaged and lost as some of them were.

The BBC has an interesting page:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59879470

Germanshepherdsmum

Some people dodged the census. I’ve had that with Irish people in Scotland who evidently didn’t trust the authorities.
Can you find your grandmother or any other relatives on that side growstuff?

Not my grandmother (the one married to my grandfather) but all my other relatives on that side of the family back to my 4 x gt grandparents.

I doubt if my grandfather deliberately dodged the census.

Chestnut

I have a 2 x great grandfather who somehow skipped about three censuses. Very odd because his family were there but he plays the invisible man. I have no idea why or how. Maybe your ancestors decided they didn't want to be in the census, or maybe the page was damaged and lost as some of them were.

The address seems to be there.

The census was just a snapshot of who was at an address on the one day that the census was taken. I have relatives who were "visitors" at other addresses, in hospital or otherwise away from home.
Last year's census was different in that it was filled in over a longer time and listed who normally lived at an address.

Chestnut

The BBC has an interesting page:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59879470

thanks for posting that info.... so sad to see the writings added to the forms of their situations of poverty and one apologised for typing as he lost half his hand in the war. etc

the 1921 census taken 19 june two months late;

People also ask
Why was the 1921 census postponed?
The United Kingdom Census 1921 was a census of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that was carried out on 19 June 1921. It was postponed for two months from April due to industrial unrest and no census was taken in Ireland due to the Irish War of Independence.

Under the first column 'relationship to head of household' they have not included adopted or fostered children and there is no advice in the instructions. It looks like they completely forgot about them. In the one I'm looking at the child was living there and fostered so was not actually related to the head or his wife.

If you want to know more about the codes used for employment you can peruse this.
archive.org/details/census-1921.-classification-of-occupations/page/n1/mode/2up

I'm waiting until the cost has reduced as I have sufficient info on my Grandparents generation for now.

Beware of Ancestry trees. I know my tree has some glaring mistakes from very early on in my research that I haven’t corrected as I’m finding it almost impossible to delete the problems.

ayse all mistakes on Ancestry can be rectified, you just have to explore the program to find out how to do things. If all else fails delete the person and enter them again. If your tree has glaring errors then you should probably make it private otherwise if it's public then all and sundry will see it and copy your mistakes.

Thanks for the link lemsip. Very interesting and some very sad stories.
Legal adoption didn’t come in until 1926 Chestnut. There wasn’t a formal system of adoption or fostering before then. One of my great aunts had an illegitimate child in the 1880s and when she died the child was taken in by another family who just treated her as their own. No formalities.

Chestnut I looked up my father last night. He is living where I thought he would be and he’s down as his parents adopted son. This isn’t news to me as we knew he was orphaned very young and raised by his aunt and uncle.

More surprising is that the parents of an ‘only’ 14yo child needed a Mother’s Help. My dad was always a quiet person as I knew him - maybe he was a tearaway teen!

Germanshepherdsmum

Thanks for the link lemsip. Very interesting and some very sad stories.
Legal adoption didn’t come in until 1926 Chestnut. There wasn’t a formal system of adoption or fostering before then. One of my great aunts had an illegitimate child in the 1880s and when she died the child was taken in by another family who just treated her as their own. No formalities.

So I wonder how they expect a child to be shown who was not related but living with the family (what we would call fostered or adopted). He's not their child or their step child and he's not a visitor. I suppose 'boarder' is the only other option. In my case two fostered boys aged 3 and 4 are shown as 'nurse child' so maybe that was a term they used.

Here's another helpful link come up:
www.findmypast.co.uk/articles

My Great-grandparents took on a small boy whose mother, a neighbour, had died in childbirth. The child's grandparents took on the baby but not the little boy.

I'm sad that I never knew this because the little boy's daughter taught me and I never knew the connection. One of his descendants did contact me through Ancestry and said he had been very happy with my Great-grandparents.

Chestnut the boy my GGP brought up is listed on the census as "Adopted Son" although I don't think it was an official adoption.

Calistemon

Chestnut the boy my GGP brought up is listed on the census as "Adopted Son" although I don't think it was an official adoption.

But I suppose they were replacing his parents permanently whereas my two boys were only being looked after. One was moved on later to Barnados so it wasn't permanent.

I've found plenty of transcription errors for previous censuses. Misspellings are of course rampant but I was particularly amused by an 1891 census transcription showing a new baby as 20 years old. That must have flummoxed a fair few who didn't dig down to the original document scan.