1921 Census release today

Chestnut

Elegran Back in the C20 I used to travel to London by train and search all day through the quarterly indexes, writing down each one as I checked it so I wouldn't forget. If you found a birth or marriage you were thrilled! Deaths were almost impossible as you rarely had any idea when they died. I didn't even attempt census returns except the 1881 which I bought on CDs. It was such hard work and so slow. When everything came online it was absolute heaven.

Chestnut I did the same. I lived near London so it was a fairly easy journey for me. Sometimes I went 2 or 3 times a week to the FRC, the London Metropolitan Archives just around the corner, and the Society of Genealogists. I loved trawling through the old books and especially the maps at the LMA. At the FRC I sometimes got annoyed at being pushed out of the way or having indexes snatched off me by professional researchers for whom 'time is money'! Presumably that no longer happens now. And of course going boggle-eyed looking at miles of microfiche! Applications for certificates were usually dealt with there and then and ready for collection at the desk before closing time. Then returning home all excited because I'd made a breakthrough in my research and where would it lead me next. And I won't even mention the hours I've spent battling through overgrown churchyards trying to read headstones. Aah those were the days! But these days I'd far rather sit on the sofa with my laptop and a cup of tea.

I too have been trawling through the census, mainly checking on where my ancestors were living in 1921. No big surprises really but I did wonder why my father was not with his family. I eventually found him on a battleship in dock. It was quite an exciting moment for me. I always knew he had been in the Navy but hadn't realised he joined at just 17! A very distant memory at the back of my mind makes me think he had wanted to get away from home. I shall now try to find out more about his Naval service.

I don't mind paying to view the records, the digitizing of all those fragile documents it must have cost an absolute fortune.

But I do think that closing the censuses for 100 years is a little excessive now. I understand the original reasons for it, but perhaps 75 years could now be considered. I would hope we are all a lot more broadminded and accepting of our ancestors mistakes and circumstances now.

If one of your relations is missing on more than one census in a port town, they might be Sailors. I have a family where the wife turns up on two censuses with a growing family with no husband then on the third he is on leave and at home, my naughty mind had thought of other reasons. Also if they are in prison, asylum or the workhouse that is where they are registered.
In my county daughter in law had a different meaning as well, it often meant what we would call step daughter. I spent ages looking for a womans husband when she was living with her mother and step dad. I presume it is the same in some cases for son in law .

Chestnut Yes, these days it is so much easier - they don't know they're born. Maybe it is too easy - sites like Ancestry are full of family trees constructed by people who think they can do it all in one day, and accept the first passable matches they come across.

Elegran Back in the C20 I used to travel to London by train and search all day through the quarterly indexes, writing down each one as I checked it so I wouldn't forget. If you found a birth or marriage you were thrilled! Deaths were almost impossible as you rarely had any idea when they died. I didn't even attempt census returns except the 1881 which I bought on CDs. It was such hard work and so slow. When everything came online it was absolute heaven.

So did I. It was a breeze after having to travel hundreds of miles to lift those heavy BMD index books off the shelves (one for each quarter of a year) to search for a name, and going home with nothing.

Did you mean to type 100 years, not 10 years, Calistemon

Yes ?

I'm sure the 1901 and 1881 censuses were free at first and I managed to do quite a lot of research years ago by using them.

Calistemon

That's rather naughty!

Surely a census should be open fr public view after 10 years.
That's how I started off, no subscriptions but researching free censuses.

Did you mean to type 100 years, not 10 years, Calistemon ? The free censuses you used were more than 100 years old. I agree that it is unfair that a document like a census should be monopolised by one site and only released for a payment, but I suppose it costs money to digitise it and construct the web pages that allow a search.

I actually bought the CDs of the 1881 census when they were released. There was a viewer , also on CD, which couild be used to see various other genealogy CDs too. That was way back in 1981 and now I can't look back on anything on my CDs because the viewer isn't compatible with later operating systems. I reckon there should have been a later version of the viewer made which was backward compatible. The set wasn't cheap!

That census was transcribed by (selected) prisoners in gaol. There were a few things inserted that didn't appear in the original, like a whole fictitious family with very odd occupations.

my paternaal grandparents adopted twin boys at birth, they are on the 1921 census as fostered age 1yr 6months.. born 1920. they were formerly adopted later when it became possible in 1926.... and grew up in the family.
I already discovered that they were born to a niece who was married with two children and had an affair with another man.......... the 100yrs Confidentiality is there for a reason........no one would fill them in if it wasn't.

I have found that errors and glitches can be reported by emailing the support department at FMP. I am making a list.

I agree Yammy.

Calistemon, given the questions asked on the last census we completed, would you really want all and sundry to have access to it in 10 years? I wouldn't and I don't think I have anything to hide, but some people probably wouldn't have been truthful, for instance about their sexuality, if they knew the information would be seen by others so soon. However there really wasn't anything in the 1921 census that you couldn't discover elsewhere other than occupation and number of rooms inhabited, unlike earlier censuses which demanded to know how long you had been married and how many children had been born to the marriage, still alive or by then dead, which must have been distressing.

I do agree that ppv is unfair though as it puts research beyond the pockets of so many. Unfortunately the Scots site ScotlandsPeople is the same, though the Scottish 1921 census hasn't been released yet.

That's rather naughty!

Surely a census should be open fr public view after 10 years.
That's how I started off, no subscriptions but researching free censuses.

If your relations are living in a different country to where they were born try saying their name in accent, my Scots Hutton turned to Hatton in Cumbria. Also names pronounced differently where they lived. I have Atkinsons down as Atchins which let me find an Ackla which was really Ackerlay and Bickit which was Bethwaite.

No you can't Calistemon. If you have a subscription to FMP you just get 10% off the ppv charge so not worth it unless you have a huge number of people to look up. Unlike Ancestry where if you had a sub you could access everything for free. I've temporarily cancelled my FMP and Ancestry subs as I don't need them at present and they don't half add up!

It's on FindMyPast, TheoddBird

Annoying as I had renewed my Ancestry subscription recently. I'm not even sure if you can access it free with a subscription.

I expected it to be on Ancestry but it isn't. Must read through all the answers here to see if anyone has found it.

That is one of the downsides, along with printing pages and pages for the file and then shredding them when new information comes along!

You have to be very careful when paying per household. I have not paid for my great aunt as I'm not sure it's her. I will wait until she's available on subscription. For all my direct ancestors I know the families so well I have no problem identifying them for certain.

Unfortunately as you have found it’s sometimes impossible to know if you have the right person until you’ve paid!

So far I have downloaded three 1921 census records but two were for the wrong people, so easy to do when many people share the same name and basic facts. You don't need to pay a subscription with Find My Past to use it, you just have to register your details and pay for each download, £2.50 for a transcript and £3.50 to view the original document, but make sure you are downloading the right person and then save it.

There is a button for reporting a transcription error.

I knew where my parents were in 1921, at least more or less where my mother was and definitely my father.
So I haven't done any delving yet - do you still have to pay per record if you have a FindMyPast subscription?
And how come this census is not free as others were?

rubysong

Does anyone know how to report errors/glitches? I know there are transcription errors and I have yet to find my father in the index. My mother is with her parents, as expected but the village doesn't come up in the index. It is shown by the final part of the next village, which is no help at all. Anyone looking for North Cave in East Yorkshire will find it just says 'thorpe'. The parish is North Cave, Drewton & Everthorpe.

When viewing the original record there is a button at the top for 'report image error' but nothing else at the moment. I haven't seen a transcription so don't know if there is a button there for 'transcription error'. You may have to take notes on errors and submit them later when the census becomes available through subscription. It's early days.

I looked up my father who was born in 1920, I knew he was fostered but it was sad to see a 1 year old listed as “boarder”.?
There were two older girls listed as adopted but their surnames were given so I wonder if this was an unofficial adoption.
I agree the transcription is poor. My father’s name was Gwilym and this is clear but transcribed and in the index as Gwinlyn.

Mummer

I really think it's far too long to wait! Specially with information being so readily available to all now, I think 50 years is the furthes reasonable wait! Well never see our own contribution

That will never happen. It is set down as 100 years in the Census Act 1920 and everyone who completed a census since then has been assured the information is confidential for 100 years. They will never break that promise.

The 1920 Census Act prohibited the unlawful disclosure of any information given in the census, determining that the information collected would only be used to produce statistics, and no information would be released which allowed the identification of any individual or household. The census information is not available to be viewed by the public for 100 years.

Chestnut yes we go on Ancestry about once a year to check out what's new but rarely find anything we want. I'm sure there are new things for other people, just not the areas/people we have an interest in.

For people missing men in the census one thing to consider is that hospital/army/navy/prison records may be in a different area. We found someone we had been missing for a couple of years in a lunatic asylum! His name was spelled incorrectly each time so we had missed him.