Get ready for an enlightening journey into the world of genealogy, as Michala and Paul McNeil uncover the critical role of the UK census in tracing family history. They will give you a behind-the-scenes peek at how these in-depth records, dating from as early as 1801, have reshaped our understanding of the past. The watershed moment, of course, was the 1841 census which became a key reference point, providing never-before-seen insights like address and occupation all in one record. Also, don't miss out on the exciting details of The Great British Dig on More4 that Michala is a part of.
Hang tight as they dig deeper into the census data from 1861 to 1911 and learn how these records have opened up a unique viewpoint into social mobility, diversity, and family life. You'll be fascinated to discover how these records, especially the digitised 1881 census and the unique handwritten 1911 census, offer unprecedented insights into the past. The pair also reminisce on the 1861 census, the transformative impact of the 1870 Education Act on the 1871 census, and the unique elements that make the 1911 census so special.
Finally, focusing on the 1921 UK census, they will explore the social and economic conditions of the working class, unearthing the role of teenage children in household economics. The pair also delve into the reflection of societal changes in the census data, like the recognition of divorce and the key role the 1921 Census played in providing accurate employment information. And the icing on the cake? The 1939 Register is a treasure trove of information providing clues about family movements during the Second World War. So whether you're a history buff, a genealogy enthusiast, or just plain curious, join Paul and Michala as they journey through the past, one census at a time!
Click here to read Michala's article on the 1921 Census https://theconversation.com/from-divorcees-to-fuller-classrooms-the-1921-census-of-england-and-wales-depicts-an-era-of-great-change-174993
To contact Michala, you can do via her website www.michalahulme.com
Get ready for an enlightening journey into the world of genealogy, as Michala and Paul McNeil uncover the critical role of the UK census in tracing family history. They will give you a behind-the-scenes peek at how these in-depth records, dating from as early as 1801, have reshaped our understanding of the past. The watershed moment, of course, was the 1841 census which became a key reference point, providing never-before-seen insights like address and occupation all in one record. Also, don't miss out on the exciting details of The Great British Dig on More4 that Michala is a part of.
Hang tight as they dig deeper into the census data from 1861 to 1911 and learn how these records have opened up a unique viewpoint into social mobility, diversity, and family life. You'll be fascinated to discover how these records, especially the digitised 1881 census and the unique handwritten 1911 census, offer unprecedented insights into the past. The pair also reminisce on the 1861 census, the transformative impact of the 1870 Education Act on the 1871 census, and the unique elements that make the 1911 census so special.
Finally, focusing on the 1921 UK census, they will explore the social and economic conditions of the working class, unearthing the role of teenage children in household economics. The pair also delve into the reflection of societal changes in the census data, like the recognition of divorce and the key role the 1921 Census played in providing accurate employment information. And the icing on the cake? The 1939 Register is a treasure trove of information providing clues about family movements during the Second World War. So whether you're a history buff, a genealogy enthusiast, or just plain curious, join Paul and Michala as they journey through the past, one census at a time!
Click here to read Michala's article on the 1921 Census https://theconversation.com/from-divorcees-to-fuller-classrooms-the-1921-census-of-england-and-wales-depicts-an-era-of-great-change-174993
To contact Michala, you can do via her website www.michalahulme.com
Hello and welcome back to an Earth The Past, a brand new family history and genealogy podcast brought to you by me, dr Michaela Hume. So this week I am joined by the man, the myth, the legend, my fellow DNA journey expert. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Pullman Neil. Now, before we actually get into today's episode, i'd like to just do a little shameless plug. One of the programs that I'm involved in, called The Great British Dig, is on your screens right now. It's on more four. You can catch it on Thursdays and Saturday evenings. My episode that I was involved in is on air this Thursday at nine o'clock and it's also repeated on Saturday. If you haven't seen it. It's a thoroughly great show. It's hosted by Hugh Dennis and also a fabulous team of archaeologists, so if you get a chance, check it out.
Speaker 1:So on with the show. This week it's all about the census. Let's go In the UK if you are looking for somebody in your family history. I think the easiest thing in terms of how you know going backwards is to find somebody on a census, and that's because you can more or less go back every 10 years, back to 1841, and it gives you not only the person that's in the house, but it also gives you other family members, which is great.
Speaker 1:The census in this country actually started in 1801. However, those early censuses are more like a head count and they're not really that useful for genealogists. I get asked all the time in fact, i give a lecture on the census at the University of Birmingham, which is where I'm based, and people my students always say so why do we have a census? We have had censuses and head counts, forms of head counts going right your way back to the Wednesday book or the 100 rolls and it's often been a form of taxation. So if you know how many people in the country and how much land they own, you know how much to tax them. However, when we get to 1801 and we get this, what we think of as the modern census, it's slightly different. So what people were concerned about during this time is that the population was growing really rapidly and that there wouldn't be enough food to feed the population, which was the real concern for people at the time. We are always at war at this point, so in every war you need to find out who is in the country who could fight working you get money from to pay for the war. So that's really kind of why this census comes about in 1801. It changes as you go throughout history, dependent upon what the government is trying to find out.
Speaker 1:So last week Krista Cowan was on she was talking about the Canadian census, saying, look, they were trying to find out if people had a radio. It's not that they were nosy and wanted to know what form of entertainment people had in their homes, it was so if they needed to do a national address, they knew who would be hearing that. So, paul, if we start with the 1841 census, something that I didn't know actually when I first started looking at this census is to do with the ages, and that's the ages being round down. I had no idea this was even a thing. So I think when I first started my genealogy all those years ago, when I saw those ages, i had no idea somebody had tampered with them. I literally thought that that was somebody's age.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i mean they tend to go in in fives and tens. So you'd see it, you know, it's less of a problem for the older people in there. They have to take the ages with a pinch of salt And then guess that people didn't know their ages either.
Speaker 1:You know officially, it's only people over the age of 15 whose ages are altered. But we know, as you will know when you do your own research if you listen to this that was not always the case. But if you were 29, for example, on the census it would say you were 25. So not only did people not know, their age, ages were also rounded down if you were over the age of 15. How useful has that 1841 census, paul, been in your research? Because that is really, isn't it? If we're going back in time, that's the last census. then before, i'm more or less relying on parish records And you know these are the records, but predominantly parish records.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and that's the watershed. That's the first time. Generally you get several points of reference in one record. You know you get a parish record and you know of a baptism And you find out the mother's first name and surname but not a maiden name. You find out the father's name and you know first name and surname And that's about it. You might find a bit about their address. You might not. In the early parish records You probably won't find what they did for a living.
Speaker 2:You might do if you're really lucky. It depends on the vicar what he wants to write down. You might find out if the child was born out of wedlock or not. You know it might say base-born or it might say bastard or it might say natural child or whatever. But that's about it. But there's very few cross-reference points, whereas when we come to 1841 and the census you've got where they live in, you've got some kind of an address. It may not be accurate if it's for a village. They'll just say the street in the village, but you know roughly where they are to within a few miles. You've got the names of all the people in the families and relative ages not always accurate, but relative ages. But then you start to find out what these people did for a living. You don't find out exactly where they were born. You find out if they were born in the county or not, which is important if people are moving around. So it's another point of reference. So all of a sudden you've got multiple points of reference. Not only that, you can say I haven't got the right family. Well, i know there were three brothers of working age at this time and I know they lived around about this village. So you find one called John.
Speaker 2:So what you do? you then go through the rest of the census for that village It might only be a few pages and you find his brother Patrick, and then you find his brother Michael, and all the ages are slightly out, but they're all aglabs or they're all woodsmen or they're, all you know, millers or whatever it might be. And you start to say, okay, this looks right. And if you do that and you look at a village, you can suddenly say, well, they've got a slightly unusual name. Who else in that village has got that name? And you find these 60 and 70 year olds living on their own. It's like, okay, is that an aunt, is that an uncle, is that a mum or dad? Who is that? And it gives you other clues and it can be a rabbit hole. You can go off in all different directions but you can look at a whole village for the first time really easily and start to pull all these threads together. So, okay, what was going on there?
Speaker 2:And the other good thing about it is it's just on the cusp of everybody getting a railway station, getting on a train and going to London or going to Manchester or going to Bristol. So most people are kind of in the area where their ancestors live Not everyone. Obviously There's a rule of thumb It's before the big migrations of people within the country You know 1830s to sort of 1850s you start getting huge amounts of people moving because there are so many railways and people accepted it and railway travel was cheaper by then. But in 1841, it hadn't quite taken off for everybody. So you've got a good chance of finding people where their ancestors lived, maybe for a couple of thousand years, who knows?
Speaker 1:I think it's worth bearing in mind as well that if your ancestor, like mine, couldn't read or write, it would be the local enumerator who was paid out the poor rate, who would be filling in those forms. So that's why we tend to see quite a few errors in transcription, because, you know, the enumerator is just literally writing down what he hears, what is coming out of somebody else's mouth. Often they're not going to be able to spell out their surname, so that's why we do get errors in the transcription. We also start to see with the system that we've not seen before is that the sensors, believe it or not, used to take weeks to collect and send in where, as it's progressed it's where are you on a single night?
Speaker 1:Often it's worth bearing in mind that your ancestor may not have been at home on that night. They may have been at a relative's house, they may have been away on business. So don't assume because they're not on the census at your house that they have died. That's actually not always the case. They may have just been at somebody else's house on the evening that the census was taken. So as the census progressed then, as we move from 1841 up to 1851, we start to get more accurate addresses. We also start to get accurate ages. I want to say accurate ages, don't forget, it's just whatever your, whatever age your ancestor thinks they are. On the 1851 census, let me tell you it can be a good 10 years out. So take it with a pinch of salt When you get to 1851 and you start going right up to the 1921, i do think that those are the real censuses that you can proper get your teeth stuck into in terms of your research.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think people start to take them much more seriously. There's much more information in them. So you start to get where people were born And some people would just put, you know, a county down. Most people would put a town or a village. Some people actually put a street address down that they were born at. So there's a mine of information in there. But you can also find out if someone's been travelling. So they've travelled from, you know, from Cornwall, and they've gone to Bristol and then they've gone across to South Wales or wherever because they're trying to find work, because they're a mining family or something like that. Then you start to see where the children are born And you can start to plot out. Every so many years maybe two years, every three years, you can see where they've moved across the country. Really useful piece of information For that 10-year period you've missed.
Speaker 2:You start to see things that fill in some of the blanks. And the other thing is because it is past that cusp where the railways came in. I mean literally hundreds of thousands of people moved around the country once railway stations came in and working-class people. It became cheap enough for working-class people to actually say right, i'm not just gonna sit in the field here and worry about if I'm ever gonna get another day's work or not. I'm gonna get on a train and I go to that London or I'm gonna go down to Manchester or wherever it might be and I'm gonna find work there And all of a sudden you see these people travelling across the country. So yeah, i mean the 1851 census is the first one, like you say, you can really get your teeth into lots of relatively accurate information And it's at a time where people are moving and you're starting to pick up on that. So it's fantastically useful, much more useful than the 1841 census from that perspective, in terms of the information you get and the cross-referencing.
Speaker 1:The 1851 census. For those people who haven't checked out yet, you get more information, as we've mentioned, than the sorry on the 1851 and what you do on the 1841. So you get, for example, name of the street, place, road, name of the house. You also get name and surname of the person who lived in the house, and this was taken on the night of the 30th of March 1851. That's wherever you were on that evening. You also get, which is really useful, the relation to the head of the family. So that gives you some indication of who these people are, because they might not share the same surname. It might not be obvious if they're related or not. They might not be related. You also get that. You get the condition to marriage. So is this person married? it's single, are they widowed? You get the ages of both the males and the females. You get the rank and profession. You get where born And you also find out if your ancestor had a disability.
Speaker 1:Also, your ancestor on the census could turn up in the most unusual of places. So not only can they be at different addresses, you may find them in prison. I found one of my ancestors in quote a lunatic asylum, which was great. So you can find your ancestors literally anywhere on the census, which I think it's why it's so interesting. Once we sort of get, don't we from 18, we can even say from 1851 up to 1901, there's little tweets but nothing major. Then the 1911 census dropped and it's like, oh my goodness, what do we have here? I remember when that came out. I think it came out, didn't it? a couple of years, so there's a hundred years closure order on census records, but I think it came out. Was it about 2009? I think it came out.
Speaker 2:It came out slightly early yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it did come out, didn't it? before 2011, which was when it should come out. And I was like my mind was blown because for the first time, i knew how many children my ancestor had had that I had just not found because they had been born and they died in between the census records, so they were just completely missing off my family trees. Did you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed it, or is it just me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, i think every census when you see them, i've seen them drop since the first time they digitized one, the 1881 census. Remember that coming out You'd get it on a CD, if you were lucky On a floppy disk. On the front of a magazine you'd put in one county at a time. So all of them are good because they all open up a new perspective on things. 1911 is particularly good because the groups of families together and it's one of the first times you see their actual handwriting, because sometimes you see more and more. So there's a few nuances as we come up to the 1911 census.
Speaker 2:1861 has a lot of gaps in it because towns like London, manchester, birmingham, wherever there's a lot of slum clearance, a lot of people were being pushed out of areas and crowded into other areas and crime went through the roof. So enumerators would leave that whole streets. When I was tracing the Cray Twins family tree when we got to the 1861 census it was so inaccurate because they were scared to go down some rows. They were going out with a policeman but they still wouldn't go. Whole streets and courtyards are missed out And they were kind of almost making things up and just writing any names in So I could see families that I knew should be there, but the names were slightly wrong and the ages were wrong. It's almost like the guy just wanted to get out as quickly as he could because he was scared of what was gonna happen. So you see social consequences showing up by mistakes and things that are missing from the census. It starts to give you a view of what's happening in certain parts of the country.
Speaker 2:1871, the 1870 schools that came in, so children had to go to school. So in the 1871 census you suddenly see all these kids that are not working anymore, at 12 years old or 10 years old. They're all scholars, ie school children, and it's the first time you see lots and lots and lots of working class kids who are down as scholars. Not only that, you start to see the parents starting to lie about their ages because if they could say they were over 12 or over 14 or whatever, they could let them work. So when the guy came around and the official looking guy started taking the ages down, they'd stick a few years on because a kid would be working in a builder's yard or doing this or helping his dad. So they'd say they were older than they were, so that it didn't look like they were doing anything illegal by taking them out of school early. So there were lots of things like that going on Again. 1911 is great because you got so much more information The point about how many children have you had as a couple?
Speaker 2:When did you get married? So how many years have you been married? Brilliant. So you know if you can't find a marriage, you know they're supposed to have got married on a certain date. And even if they didn't get married, you know when they met roughly, because it'd be the year before the eldest child was born. But they would give you that on there. And you know they've had certain children that didn't make it And some families would be clear and they'd have 10 children that would be alive. Others, you'd see like 15 children and eight of them died. And you think what did they go through?
Speaker 1:And I'm in this. When we did the find my past podcast a couple of weeks ago, i mentioned I've used the 1911 census because you can search it on. Find my past by address.
Speaker 2:I.
Speaker 1:Put. I put in all my addresses going back to 1841 in that census so I can see what the house was like. So it gives me some idea of how many rooms Were in that house. You know, going back through history So I can work out if it's to up to down or had they moved out to the Victorian semi? We spoke about social mobility earlier on in this podcast.
Speaker 1:But a Lot of people when the census first came out, especially middle-class people, tended to live and working class people where they work. But generally if you were to shop, if you're middle class and you own a shop in the center of Manchester, you lived above your shop. If you where you worked in Manchester, if you work in class, you work, you live near the mill in an ideal world. Also, you do get some idea from that census of nationality Where people are from. I was doing a bit of work last year on the census and looking at diversity in in Manchester And I was looking at people who'd come over here from from Africa and what they were doing in Manchester. And you know I was looking at interpreters from Egypt and Some people had come over from Africa, were working on software docs I was looking at you know how diverse was Manchester during the, the 1911 Census, and again, that census was great for giving me that, that type of information.
Speaker 2:The other thing I like is when people write things on the census that they shouldn't. So it's very precise what you meant to put in the census and I was. I was tracing the family recently and basically a girl from the family married this guy and you know he tried his best but he He wasn't great at anything Can. He had a. He had a fairly rough life and so the family did as well and they traveled up and down the country. He worked on the railways. So again, if you're a railway worker, depending on what your job is, you can be shipped across the country. You could end up in Hull, you can end up in you know somewhere in East Anglia. When you, you know, started off in in London, the next minute You're down in Kent or somewhere, because you've gone to another railway company and He was obviously failing in life and There came a census where I couldn't find him.
Speaker 2:I couldn't find him for a number of years But then I found a census entry for his wife on her own with the kids, and what she'd written in was For marriage status, rather than single, married or widow. I expect to see a W for widow. She wrote in deserted And it's like okay, now I know what's happened. He's not dead, he's probably changed his name, he's gone off, he's doing whatever. But the enumerator obviously crossed it through Because that's not the correct status and they put M for married. But the fact she wrote that in, she wanted her say to say, look, this is my status, i've been deserted and this is like 1891, something like that.
Speaker 1:Straight away that came in the clue as to what was going on with that family you have ever Looked at the 1911 census In any great depth and you have an ancestor who was a suffragette, you'll find that often that they dated, deface the census. So Because they weren't seen as you know that People in other words you, weren't seen as citizens because you weren't able to vote, then why should they fill in the census? So you often get, if you're an ancestor, if your ancestor was a suffragette, that they have defaced the census. When I did who do you think you are? and I did, michelle Keagans Who do you think you are her ancestor, under occupation on the 1911 census, wrote suffragette. So it's worth. They can be used, i think, as well to make political points or political statements. I've seen some census records where it lists everybody in the house, including the dog, the cats and the budgie. You know it's like everybody is listed on there, but they are just in terms of records. I think they are one of the most useful records you will control as a genealogy.
Speaker 1:I suppose we should talk, paul, about the 1921 census. It dropped last year. Yeah, in January time. I Was very excited because I love a census and this is a census now for me that my Grandparents are on. So this is a census where there's actually people that I know That that are on, that are on the census, so I couldn't wait for it to be launched. I It was a slight letdown In terms of, in terms of information. I actually prefer the 1911 For all the reasons we've listed. You know gives us in, for it gives us data on Infant mortality, on the size of your house, on you know how many years you've been married, all the estimate that we spoke about. I Know that the 1921 census for me does two real things. I think one of them is It tells you the relationship between the children and those living in the house. So by that I mean you know if somebody was adopted. Sometimes it says it doesn't it on yeah on on there.
Speaker 1:Only the parents died of children. It gives you more information About some desoccupation and where they worked and you get an address. But What did you make of the 1921 census?
Speaker 2:well, i think You know it does give less information than 1911. So it was kind of a bit of a letdown from that point of view, because stuff you would have seen before has now gone missing again. So you can't find those missing children necessarily. The plus point is Again their own handwriting, so that's good. You can see what they, you know how literate they were and also the name of employers. So so You know they would say that they are. I don't know They're a bottler or a bottle washer. I've won today that I found and it turns out that they were and they were working in Fremlins brothers brewery in Campbellwell. So all of a sudden you know I was brought up in Peckham and Campbellwell, so so I know what they're talking about. But then it takes you to They would have to walk there, so that's a mile walk from where they live. So you start to understand bits about what their life was like. So you can start to infer things from that. So I like that. The fact that it gives you the name of the employer. I like the handwriting is It contains less data than the 1911 one. The thing I do like on it is that People don't realize when they talk about the depression, great depression or this, and I think of the 1930s.
Speaker 2:If you look in, say, south Wales or even in South London in the 1921 census and you look at working class people, lots of them would say what they did for a living. But probably one of the first times, generically people were saying if they were out of work. So in previous censuses people would say what they did for a living. They might say if they were unemployed or not. They might not, but in that one the number of people that were out of work was astronomical and often you find the main breadwinner, the father, would be out of work and it would be teenage children that had, you know, small jobs that were must have been keeping the house running, with money coming in, because they were still employed, because they were cheaper to employ.
Speaker 2:So you start to see things like this coming out of it, which I think is again quite interesting. You start to see the social side of things that might be missed. You know, you know he was a miner, but actually what he didn't know was he didn't have work in that year. So how long had he been out of work? Had they closed the mine? Did they see him. As you know, was he a striker they didn't like, so they put him on a black list because there was a lot of that going on. So you start to see a little bit of social comment, effectively by what the people were writing there.
Speaker 1:I have. I think I've found quite a few of my ancestors on that 1921 census and I think with the exception of one, they are all out of work. They are apart from the exception of one. Something else that I suppose is interesting about the 1921 one that we've not spoke about is that for the first time divorce is recognised. I mean, divorce was still relatively difficult to get at that time. It was still expensive. You know, not everybody could get divorced, but divorce is recognised on that census and, as we've already mentioned, we get more of an in-depth look into occupations and where people worked, where they were employed. It's not a census in a strict, in the strict sense of a census right, but we're not going to have another census now. Are we Till? Well, it'll be 2051.
Speaker 2:2051-52.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, so the 1931 census was destroyed in a fire. There was no census taken in 1941 because the war's on, so we're not going to have a census now for quite a while. However, we do have the 1931 register, which I really like, and I really like it for two reasons, poor right. The first is that I get an accurate date of birth. I also get off that record if a person remarried after that record was taken, or if there was single and they got married or whatever. You also get their married names put on at a later date, which has been really useful.
Speaker 2:That's interesting because of the NHS coming in and that to register people for national insurance and all this kind of thing. So you see the red line cross through, don't you? and then the other name put above it, which is fantastic, especially for women.
Speaker 1:Perfect because you know, often we always say you struggle with more recent records, so look, everybody's traceable and doable. But it's going to cost you quite a bit if you keep having to buy marriage certificates to see if that's your ancestor who got married. However, with the 1939 register, if you are looking for a female and she did get married if you have a look, often it's got a line crossed through. Whatever names on it the new surname is written and sometimes it has a date of when that marriage took place or year. So it can be really useful for that. So for those two reasons I really like the 1939 register. What about you? have you used that in your, in your research?
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, it's an interesting time because it's just before the Second World War, but it's, everybody knew there was going to be a war. This was going to happen. This was, you know, we were in the phony war, if you like. You know it was going to happen and that's why they, they, they carried it out. But that that gives you two things that you, you, wouldn't always get. One is and this has come up just just the other day, i'm in the middle of a big commission for a private customer, lovely family, and the family moved up from the new forest and moved up to London.
Speaker 2:But because we, you know, it's hard to find people in the 1940s because it's quite difficult to get some of the army records and all this. But there's two things you can find in there. One is you can find people that have evacuated before the war. So suddenly you'll see people disappearing from south London and they're in Dalkin or they turn up in you know Cornwall or somewhere like that, and you can bet your bottom dollar that if it's a wife with children, they're getting out of London because everybody's it's. Everybody saw what happened in Spain where he got bombed by the you know Franco's forces and the Germans etc. And the Italians, and so they're getting out of London because they fully expect the Blitz to come. And they were right, it it did come.
Speaker 2:So you suddenly start to see women and children moving out, not being where you expect to find them, and there's no reason in the census but you can infer it. If there's suddenly a place where you wouldn't expect it and there's no relations there, it's a good clue. The other is, if the men are missing and they're of military age, they're probably a soldier, sailor, airman, whatever. Because, obviously because we expected to be invaded at some stage, they didn't say where the men were, if they were in the military and where they were serving. So if they've disappeared, again it it. If you see a hole, then that tells you something. Missing information tells you something. It's not no information, it's still information. So if the man's missing and you know where he should be, he's probably signed up. So you've got a good chance of maybe then to start looking for, you know, commonwealth war graves or other records for them in World War II, the 1939 register is really the last census type document we've got.
Speaker 1:However, you can still move to the present. There's a couple of things that I use, so one of them is the electoral register. The electoral register is online. Oh, just one thing, actually, before I talk about a bit about the electoral register. Just going back to the 1939s, while I've remembered it is worth checking out the 1939s on all your genealogical site.
Speaker 1:When I was looking at it yesterday when I was on Find My Past, i could see a person on the 1939 register. When I looked at that same record on Ancestry that person was blanked out. So there is, like census records, a closure order on some of these records, and it is on the 1939 register how long the person has been deceased. There's a certain period of time before that person's name appears on the register. So just because you can't find somebody on the register, it doesn't mean they're not there. It may just mean that they've not been sort of deceased long enough that it's been picked up and their record has been opened on the 1939 register. I hope that makes sense, but it is worth checking out. As I said I've got, i could find the person on Find My Past when I looked at the same document and ancestry. Their name was blanked out. I couldn't see it.
Speaker 2:It's worth saying on that point as well, not just on the 1939, but on other censuses. I always cross reference. If I can't find someone, i'll cross reference ancestry with Find My Past or whatever. Two reasons One is at some stage they've used different transcribers. So someone may misspell a surname if it's slightly unusual, but they may do that on, say, find My Past, but not on ancestry. You might find the right one, or vice versa. So it's worth checking both if you can't find somebody, because it may be a transcription error.
Speaker 2:The other thing is the actual scans they've done are not always the same. So sometimes you're going and you'll see an 1861 or an 1871 census on one site and it's really pal. You can barely see the contrast of the words from the page. And then you're going to the other one and it's been scanned differently or the image has been treated differently and it's fully readable. So it's always worth, if you get a problem on one, go to another big site. So go from ancestry, go to Find My Past or whatever and compare them, because quite often it will throw up things. If you're stuck on one you may be able to find on the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, again yesterday. One website. I couldn't find this person on the census, but I could on the other site. So I was on Find My Past. I'd found this person on the census. I then went on to Ancestry to find that census record, to upload it to my family tree And it turns out whoever had transcribed it on Ancestry had transcribed the name. It should have been Farrell and they done it as ferret And that's why I know, and that's why it wasn't coming up when I did the search. If you find transcription errors, you can actually alert them and you can just change it yourself, which I have done. So if you are searching for a Farrell and not a ferret, i've done you a favour. I'll accept chocolate in the post.
Speaker 2:Well, i can give you another story like that. There's a famous one about a footballer who was I don't know if he was from Manchester or Liverpool, but basically the census enumerator came down and took all their details down And when the census came out he was down as a fruit boiler. And what it was? he was Scottish. When they got a host in what he did for a living, he said I'm a fruit boiler. He put it down as a fruit boiler. So there you go.
Speaker 1:So we'll talk about the 1939 register. I was going to say there is something else we can use now to get us to the present, and that is electoral registers. They're not strictly a census, but if you are trying to find somebody they can be really useful. They are pretty much up to date. I think you can go up to 2022. If my memory serves me correctly. it doesn't give you the whole period from sort of 1940 to 2022, which is a shame, but it does give you towards the latter end of the 20th century and into the 23rd century. Another record that I use, which you can get on Ancestry, are phone books. Phone books can be really useful. You do need to know the surname of the person you are looking for and also the area you are looking for. Phone books is also another useful tool. Paul, have you got anything to add or have you used those records? Have they been useful to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think there's a couple of things. One is again this came up recently on the electoral record. So one thing on that is you find the women that were active after the First World War and just before the First World War and may have owned property before the First World War. They'll come up with an electoral record Because, as the name says, they're only on there if they can vote. And you find women having to vote before the 1920s because they could vote in local elections And you see them coming up on the electoral record. So that's quite useful. You also see the women that actually wanted to vote and were registering, because not all women did, they left it to their husband. You know it was that day with the times. So that's quite interesting Once you get past the First World War and it took, you know, 800,000 deaths of men in the First World War to get working class men to vote. But so it's great for that, it's great for seeing people turning up in that.
Speaker 2:The other thing it gives you and again this came up recently sometimes people would be in effectively council housing, so in a block of flats, because houses have been knocked down and they would have a. They probably pay their money to the borough. So when I was a kid we lived in a house and we paid money to the borough. We didn't have a private landlord. The Campbell World Borough Council took our money and we lived in a council house basically for most of my life until I got married. So if you were in there sometimes they were quite good And if you had an extended family you would want to hang on to that address. So you'll often see people coming up with more than one address and you'll find them in a council house and then you'll see them in the electoral register at another house But they only might be registered to vote at one and you get little letters before their names saying not registered to vote. So if you, if you see a letter after or before someone's name on the electoral register, go to the front page of the register and look through and there are codes in there And it tells you that they may be registered to that address but they can't vote there because they live in somewhere else and that's where they're really voting.
Speaker 2:So I've seen people that lived in Clapham and they had this council house but it was the family home for like 30 years But then the children made good, but they kind of they used to let you stay in the council houses. You know you could almost pass them down through the family at one time And some of the children made good, the parents died. They kept the council house going but then they moved out and they had this other house and then their kids would move in. So there was a lot of that kind of moving, of chess pieces about going on. So it can sometimes show you where people are in more than one place, or they appear to be. So you look up the letters to see if they could actually vote there or not. And if they couldn't then you know actually they're probably not living there.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I like is 192.com. So 192.com is good because it gets lots of information from lots of different places. From you know telephone directories, from you know electoral records and this kind of thing, and they're all in one place and they're all modern. And it gives you a rough idea for the age of people, not an accurate one, but a rough one to within a few years. And it will give you a family snapshot of who's living at that address or it will show you if they've got lodgers and this kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So when I'm trying to trace living people I will often use 192.com. You've got to pay for it, So it doesn't come cheap. You're going to have to pay to get this information, but you can track people down and you can suddenly see where they stopped living somewhere, and then there's another family in there, so it's quite good for that kind of thing. I found a guy that died and he was a relation of someone, and by finding out when he stopped living in an address I then just by luck found an immemorial for him, a funeral home, so I could track down exactly what happened to him. But it was all because of 192.com made it very easy to find his movements. So that's another modern source which I think is quite useful, but it's not cheap.
Speaker 1:I might check that out. I've never actually used 192.com. I know I've mentioned more recent online electoral registers. There are electoral registers that do fill in that gap from World War II up to the end of the 20th century, but most of those for where I live in the Northwest are still with the local archives or records office. In the case of somebody that I was looking at the other day, they're in the local library. They're big old books so you're not able to search them by person. Unfortunately. You can only search them by address. Nevertheless, they are really useful. But, as I say, electoral registers are available but you're just gonna have to go along to the local records office or archives where you are researching.
Speaker 2:I think it's worth adding. We've spoken mainly about UK records. We've got probably the best census records in the world, without a doubt, and the most complete as well. Scotland's a good. England and Wales are good. Ireland are problematic. Most of those are gone. There are a few sort of 1911 and a few fragments left. So there is a problem with Irish records.
Speaker 2:The other set of records that are very good are American records, because there's state censuses as well as national censuses sorry, federal censuses so you get both, and on some of them if someone's got a farm it's who you have, the acres he's got and things like that. So there's some quite interesting information. I found some that told you how much the farm was worth roughly. So this was around about the time of the Civil War.
Speaker 2:I was tracing a family for some people that were in America and I could trace their family and I worked out. they were on a march of a Confederate rebel march through part of the North. So they would have been under siege in their little village where they lived and because they had a farm they probably had rebel soldiers billeted on them, or at least they would have gone there to take food and supplies and this kind of thing. So by telling that they had a farm and the size of the farm and what it was worth, it gave you all that information about their relative worth in that area and how they would have been affected by different things. So the American censuses, i think, are very good If you've got ancestors that went there or you've got ancestors in America.
Speaker 1:Paul. That is it for today. Now, i normally finish the podcast by getting you to tell me who from your family tree you would take for dinner and what would you cook, right? But because you've already shared that on a podcast we did a couple of weeks ago, who out of the trees you have researched, would you like to go to the pub with?
Speaker 2:There is one obvious one Go on, and that is when we did DNA journey and we did the family tree of the red naps. So we did flint off and red nap and I found their ancestor. Actually, i found the ancestor and I found the story before the program was even made and that's probably the reason I've got on the program in the first place, because I had this story about Jamie Rednaps' ancestor who pulled off the biggest wages snatch in British history at the time in 1840. He got away with the equivalent of 2.5 million and he got away with it and he lived happily ever after And all his family lived happily ever after. He was never caught. But I tracked him down and I know where he ended up. But I would love to have a meal with him and sit down with him and just find out how he pulled it all off, because he did it in 1840.
Speaker 2:He used new technology. He got a newspaper to put a false report in its pages to say that he was going to Texas. He was taken off because Texas was a new country then an independent republic. He got on a train with his six kids and his wife and his amazingly small black dog or remarkably small black dog, as the papers reported, got on a train and came down south. The trains had only been running to Liverpool for a few years, so he was using new technology again. He posted a letter at Croydon back to Liverpool to the police there to tell him to send him in the wrong direction. Basically that posted only being gone for a few years in 1840.
Speaker 2:He went down to Southampton, got on a steamer with his family and went to Guernsey. That regular steamship line had only been going for a few years. He was tracked down. They said he was going to go to France and he didn't. He came all the way back and he lived out his life in Lambeth in South London, about half a mile from where his mother lived, and we touched on that in the program.
Speaker 2:We went through a lot of this And he kind of lived happily ever after. He worked on the railways, he worked in the stations. He obviously had an interest in what was a new technology at the time And I'd love to sit down and find out what made him do it and did he think he was going to get away with it? And you know how happy was he that he had got away with it and all his kids had quite good lives after that. And would he believe that for all these years, despite changing his name and going into hiding, i tracked him down and I knew what happened to him. So that would be. I would love that. I would love to talk to that guy, william Redknapp. There you go.
Speaker 1:Paul, thank you so much. In a couple of weeks, let's come on and let's talk about our criminals. You know I've written a couple of books on the warring criminals. Let's talk. Let's do five each our top 10 Victorian criminals. Let's do that in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:Paul, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, as always. My mates, thank you so much. Thank you all for listening. Honestly, i am shocked by the number of people that are tuning in and downloading and watching us on YouTube as well. Thank you so much. It is appreciated. Me and Paul would like to say thank you because we, honestly, we really appreciate your support and those messages saying much there, enjoying it, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. So a new podcast drops every Monday. You can get it from wherever you get your podcast from, if this is the first time you're listening Spotify, apple, wherever you're getting from. If you want to see what we look like, if you're curious, what does Paul even look like? You can also check us out on YouTube as well. Have a great week everybody. Enjoy the sunshine, if there is any. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:Cheers. Thank you.