1911 census

[DaveBrigg]

As you will have seen, the 1911 census is available online. It allows an address search, which might take a little playing around with to find your house. If you choose to download the image of the census page (rather than transcript) it reveals who lived there, ages, length married, number of children they have had and occupations. What might be of particular interest is the box at the bottom which records the number of rooms in the property (including the kitchen, but not the bathroom, landing etc). This may give an indication of when building alterations were carried out. Each census image costs just over £3 and comes in the form of a jpg file. The transcript of the page is a third of the cost, but has less information.

If you know the name of someone who lived in the property in 1911, and want to see who else was there, do a person search. Narrow down the search fields until it produces only one result, the person you were looking for.(e.g specify the exact age or parish) Then, in the url address at the top of the page, change the results number from 4 to 3. This should produce a search result which includes the exact address. Copy this address and return to the person search page. Paste the property address into the relevant space on the search form, and put a comma in the surname box (it must have something in this field). A quick search should then bring up everyone in this property on the day in 1911.

one word of caution - the census is based on street names and numbers that existed in 1911. If the details have changed in the last 98 years, your results could be misleading.

 

[Flyfisher]

It's probably just me, and I know that making all this information available must cost something, but it does rankle somewhat that the Government forces the population to provide such information but will only release it for a fee.

Contrast this with many other online information repositories that are accessible for no cost at all.

Still, at 102, my paternal grandmother is still with us and sufficiently compos mentis to be able to tell us stories of all her relatives, although sometimes it would be worth a small fee to . . . . . no, I mustn't even think it!

 

[MdB]

For those that can't google, the site is here: http://www.1911census.co.uk/

Something strange is going on in my village though as the house names are completely different from their current names. I haven't found a single match in my brief look.

 

[vicky whitworth]

Frederick Larcombe was here in Chardstock in 1911 with his wife (a lace mender) and their five kiddies. That was when they lived in No 1, nos 2 and 3 being described in our Deeds as in ruins (an incident with a wasp nest, thatch and a bright idea to smoke the wasps out!) - seven of them in a one-room hovel with just a ladder up to a sleeping platform. I should quit complaining about the building work.

 

[Jon Maine]

We still had the Dunkerton family, he was a widower by 1911 at the age of 52 with 5 other family members living in the same house. Must have been well known locally as he was the resident market place farrier and lists his address only as "Shepton Mallet". There must have been a further reference on the back of the form to establish it was in the market place as that is how I found it on the listing, without a number. I had to try 4 "market place"with no number before I got the right one!

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Flyfisher,

I guess the issue with cost is that this is historical data that has a significant cost to transcribe manually and digitalise. I personally don't mind paying for this information, but would object to paying for more recent census that were recorded electronically.

Incidentally I have always found sites like Ancestry to be better value than just accessing individual docuemnts/images for a fixed fee. My subscription has lapsed recently (too busy on the house to continue to seach family/house histories) but was about a tenner a month and gave full census access back to 1840 for transcripts as well as individual page images. It also had countless other UK and Ireland documents included for this fee, including all the usual BMD registrations. Very powerful search facility, as well as the chance top collaborate (cheat!) with others searching similar family trees.

Of course there are other sites as well as Ancestry, and I'm not connected to them in any way.

Robin

 

[Flyfisher]

Yes, you're right about the costs of course, I guess I'm just suspicious of the motivation behind the project. Is it intended for the 'greater good' and it's a pity that the unavoidable costs have to be recovered or is it commercial venture to raise revenue from public information? A few paid-for advertisments could have done wonders.

After all, Google Books has managed to make a huge range of books available online for free and the Gutenburg Project is doing a similar thing. Both appear to be entirely altruistic in their motivation (although perhaps we have yet to see Google's 'great plan' once it has catalogued the mankind's entire output, of everything!).

But I do appreciate the tremendous time saving with online access. We've tracked down a lot of our house info and previous owners from online indexes of records although the bulk of the original documentation is still only accessible from the county record offices, meaning a day out - maybe more - if we want copies. Which is why we haven't got that far yet! But at least we know where they are.

 

[DaveBrigg]

The earlier census information is available for free from our County Records Office, (although I don't know if they have 1911 yet) so the charge is more for the convenience rather than the value of the data itself. I was expecting to find a host of farm workers listed for our house, but it turned out to contain the farming couple, their two daughters and a servant girl. The family surname is the same as farmers in the next village who supplied the vital 'raw' ingredient for our wattle and daub, so I am sure they will be delighted to know that they have helped to conserve a house which was once owned by someone in their family.