.
Since 1801, with the exception of the war year of 1941, Britain has carried out a National Census every decade until 2001. Past census returns up to 1911 are easily available online (with the exception of Scotland who don’t publish that year until March of next year).
Now the census is to be scrapped under plans announced by the Cabinet Office Minister who says that it is an expensive and inaccurate way of measuring the number of people in Britain. Reports suggest that the Cabinet will approve the plan and that the next census, in March of next year, will be the last one conducted.
It may well be that, as the minister says, there are different and cheaper ways of counting the population of Britain using existing public and private databases. However, a tremendous reference source used by a variety of bodies and private individuals will be lost for ever.
I, for example, have so far been able to track my father’s family back as far as 1851 using the published census returns. I’m still working on this project to see if I can get further back in time and also waiting to see what the family position was in 1911.
So I believe it will be a very great shame if future generations will not be able to research the census returns after 2011.
.
Since 1801, with the exception of the war year of 1941, Britain has carried out a National Census every decade until 2001. Past census returns up to 1911 are easily available online (with the exception of Scotland who don’t publish that year until March of next year).
Now the census is to be scrapped under plans announced by the Cabinet Office Minister who says that it is an expensive and inaccurate way of measuring the number of people in Britain. Reports suggest that the Cabinet will approve the plan and that the next census, in March of next year, will be the last one conducted.
It may well be that, as the minister says, there are different and cheaper ways of counting the population of Britain using existing public and private databases. However, a tremendous reference source used by a variety of bodies and private individuals will be lost for ever.
I, for example, have so far been able to track my father’s family back as far as 1851 using the published census returns. I’m still working on this project to see if I can get further back in time and also waiting to see what the family position was in 1911.
So I believe it will be a very great shame if future generations will not be able to research the census returns after 2011.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment