Genealogy Chat

Perranmaid Well, yes, that had occurred to me too! I remember reading in the same article - in the Times, no less - that the 1911 had already been shipped out to (?Peru?Sri Lanka? sorry, cant remember now) for stabilisation and digitalising. The beauty of this scheme, said the author of the article, was that labour was cheap, and the lack of knowledge of the English language would not be a problem. As I said, we shall see! Olde Crone

Old Crone Know what you mean!!! I wonder though how much is hype, wishful thinking, or good old fashioned marketing????

Perranmaid Well, there you go - it just goes to show that you shouldn't believe a word you read in the press! (As if I didnt know that already of course). Olde Crone

Direct copy from national archives home page which has quite a large write up of thier plans for release of the 1911 census. .....The 1911 census is a huge document – more than 12 times the size of the 1901 census, with 35,000 volumes containing the details of our 35 million ancestors and occupying some 2 kilometres of shelving. They are in good condition and suitable for scanning, with less than 5 per cent requiring more extensive conservation work to be scanned safely. In addition there are also 38,000 volumes of enumerators´ summary books that are in excellent condition..... I hope they can cope better than happened with 1901.

Thass funny - I read that there are NO Enumerator's books for the 1911(they never got written up, the Government being rather busy with the impending War) and all that exists is a pile of soaking wet household schedules, which have been allowed to dry out, creating huge blocks of solid paper, each sheet of which has to be stabilised before it can be removed from the top of the stack. Well, we will just have to wait and see, won't we. Olde Crone

I read that the enumerators books for the 1911 census may be in poor condition, but the original household schedules are in perfect condition, although there is about 10 times more paperwork to microfilm. Plus with all the different handwriting, there will be mistrancriptions galore. Ben

Not much use to genealogists, but you can get basic statistical information from 1931 census here: vision.edina.ac.uk/census/census_page.jsp?yr=1931&show=DB

thanks all, this really helps avril

the 1911 census can be release on 1st Jan 2012 the 1921 census can be release on 1st Jan 2022 the 1931 census was distroyed in WW2 (England and Wales a the very least) the 1941 census was never taken due to WW2 - but a census was taken in 1939 for ID cards except service personnel. the 1951 census can be release on 1st Jan 2052 the 1961 census can be release on 1st Jan 2062 the 1971 census can be release on 1st Jan 2072 the 1981 census can be release on 1st Jan 2082 the 1991 census can be release on 1st Jan 2092 the 2001 census can be release on 1st Jan 2102

To be totally accurate, only the 1931 census for England and Wales was destroyed. Denis.

The 1931 census is also missing - it was destroyed in a bombing in WW2. Olde Crone

The link is http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/stories/110.htm Seems it is in good condition Bob

thanks nell

Regarding the 1911, after a lot of rumours about how smelly and what a mess its in, Phoenix found a press release saying that the Nat. Archives are chuffed and full of exciting plans to digitise it. Mind you they were chuffed and had exciting plans about the 1901 census too, and that promptly crashed the minute it was launched! nell

I was only talking yesterday about the 2001 census form I filled in and speculating about all the changes there will be by the time I fill in the 2011 one! nell

thanks for the information

Yes, census data exists at ten year intervals, except for one missing during WWII. Data is not published for 100 years, though, which is why the 1901 census is the latest available. I believe that the 1911 census is in very poor condition due to storage problems with the original retunrs, and it remains to be seen in what form it may appear in due course.

Is there census' after 1901? and where would i find them? thanks av