1901 Census

The PRO launched its project to put the UK censuses online with the 1901 records that became open to the public in January 2002. The digitising of the 1891 census is underway and negotiations to use the work already done on the 1881 census are in progress. The launch of this service attracted wide media coverage, and the system could not cope with the millions trying to log on.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Search The options here are Person Search, Advanced Person, Address, Place, Insitutions, Vessels or Direct Search. Up to this point these searches are free. In each of these there are several boxes to help narrow your search (such as age, place of birth, or place keywords), though it is better to do a broader search first and then narrow down the options if you get too many results, as you can easily miss the right person if you specify information that does not agree with the transcribed entry. The search only copes with one 'First Name' so if you know with certainty of more than one name you should use the Advanced Person Search and use the Other Names box. The results pages give you basic details from which you can work out which of the records you want to view. To view either the full transcription or the original census record (as a scanned document) you are transferred to a payment screen.

Account Sessions There are two ways of paying to view the records: by credit card or vouchers obtainable in multiples of £5 from the FRC, PRO, SoG and many family history societies. A period of 48 hours of time costs £5 either way, but whereas you have up to six months to use up a voucher after you first register it, a credit-card session must be used within 48 hours. This restriction caused large problems in the busy first days after the site went live and people could not get access and so the period had to be extended. It is likely that using vouchers is a better option unless you have an intensive period to set aside for your research. If you do use a credit card, you are able to specify an upper limit. Setting this quite high is worthwhile because, when you have reached your specified limit, if you decide to continue, your new session will be subject to the £5 minimum limit again. Make sure that you suspend your session rather than logging off when you have finished so that can you resume later. Don't forget to make a note of your unique session ID. Session Details will show you what you have spent, and what you have left.


Viewing an individual's transcription costs 50p, and you can then choose to view either the transcriptions of all others in the household for a further 50p, or go straight to the original census image (which will probably reveal all the other household members) for 75p. Once downloaded, the images can be stored on your hard disk, or printed out. The site advises printing on A3, good advice but not a facility that all home-based users will have. There are good zoom facilities for viewing the image, and you can reverse the colours to see it white on black, which is often easier for deciphering difficult handwriting.


Tour this Site The site is quite straightforward to use, but if you are daunted, take the clear site demo tour first.



This site is now managed by Genes Reunited on behalf of the National Archives.