1921 Census release today

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.

People are assured when filling in the census forms that they will remain secret for a hundred years. There was a lot of pressure to release the 1921 census earlier. I think it was Theresa May who refused.

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

Interesting of course, but so far I haven't found anything I didn't know already, but will keep looking just in case.

I have only looked up my maternal grandparents so far, hopefully time this afternoon to look at some more. I was surprised that fewer questions were asked than in 1911. Perhaps people didn’t like being asked how many years they had been married at the same time as giving children’s ages!
I was surprised to find my grandfather was a smallholder as not long after the census and for the rest of his working life he was a sub postmaster. He was shot through the head in WW1 and afterwards had a volatile temper. An early example of today’s gardening therapy perhaps.

My GGM took in three nephews and a niece whose parents died suddenly. Their GPs would only take the eldest girl whom they treated no better than a servant. My GGM already had 10 children of her own, and a few years later she added two more little boys (unrelated) to her family when their mother died and their drunken father was always beating them. It seemed to happen a lot back then.
I guess when you have a large family a few more don't make much difference. Her 'adopted' children all appeared as 'son' or 'daughter' on the Census so I guess that's how she thought of them and what she told the enumerator. My GF always thought of them as his brothers and sister. She was a remarkable woman, bringing up 16 children in a small cottage! She was also the local midwife (no qualifications except her own experiences), and did washing, cleaning and baking to boost the coffers.

I shall be exploring the 1921 Census this evening.

growstuff

Strangely, my paternal grandparents aren't on it. I know they were married in 1919 and I know where they lived, so it's surprising. They must have been on holiday or abroad for some other reason.

Hi Growstuff,
I tried for my maternal grandparents through both of them without any luck I then tried my aunt who had a very unusual first name and up she popped but not in the district /parish I would have expected. It was the voting consistency with a place name she turned up in not the parish or town.
I'm going to try some more later my father had not been born but his elder sister with an unusual name for the area had so I might be in luck.
Surely Ancestry will be quick to follow when they realise they are losing custom.
I would agree how easy it is these days instead of trolling through micro fische at the Centers and also people who copy any old thing then Ancestry changes yours. I have found this quite a lot and I'm thankful I always printed off a copy of the census.

I searched for my grandparents on the 1939 one . I found their house which I went to many times in my childhood , my mother was brought up there with 3 siblings . My aunt , aged 81 , still lives across the road . My GF died in 1973 and my GM in 1989.

Chestnut

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.

Yes, I think they took him on as toddler and he was still on a census with them when he was 23.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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

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.