[Bell Historians] 1851 census

[Chris Pickford]

It's an immensely valuable source for a whole range of historical studies, so not off topic (I hope!).

One of the reasons why 1851 hasn't been made more widely available is the potential loss of revenue to the family history societies who carried out the initial indexing and who offered printed indexes for sale - back in pre-computer days. I was involved in setting up "the next big genealogical indexing project" when 1881 was completed. We wanted to do 1851 next, but the vested interests and protectionist attitudes of some societies made this impossible - a real shame, because much of the transcription had been done and could have been simply (well, fairly simply) automated.

There are a lot of 1851 census transcripts and indexes out there, but not easily searchable by occupation as Anne says - and not always that reliable, either. Bleins is clearly an error for Blews in the 1851 for Birmingham - and on the 1881 census the name of William Warskitt (the works manager who lived in the foundry house at Whitechapel) has been wrongly indexed as Masskett

CP

----- Original Message ----- 
From: the_mcwomble 
To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 3:26 PM
Subject: Re: [Bell Historians] 1851 census


--- In bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com, "A Willis" <zen16073 at z...> 
wrote:
> 
> Used the disk for the 1851 census today. Only Devon , Norfolk and
> Warwick, are available for some reason,

The LDS used the results of the 1851 UK census for Devon, Norfolk & 
Warwick shires to test and develop the software which they later "used 
in anger" so to speak with the complete 1881 UK census.

It is the hope of many a genealogist that the other census' will be 
completed, in fact I believe indexing of the 1891 census is in 
progress. 

Apologies to those who regard this as off-topic SPAM.




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