Thoughts on the forthcoming 1921 Census release

Thoughts on the forthcoming 1921 Census Release

The news is out that the 1921 census will be released on 6th January 2022. It will be exclusively on Find My Past and on a pay as you go basis initially. After the initial excitement (and whinging about the costs) here are my thoughts on how to approach it. 

The 1921 census will be the last census revealed until 2052 for several reasons. The Census Act of 1920 means that documents must remain secret for 100 years, and with the 1931 Census being destroyed in 1942 and no census being taken in 1941 due to the Second World War there is a long wait until the next one. 

1. Make a list of who you need to look for 

Let's face it, with the £2.50 per transcript view and £3.50 per original image, the cost can still stock up so my advice would be making a list of who you know should be on the census. 

I plan to make a list for both my family tree and my PhD research, and I know that for my PhD alone I will have at least thirty records that I will need to consider which will be a cost of £75 for the transcripts alone so I will need to consider which will be the most beneficial.

2. Who do you NEED to know more about?

 If you're just looking up your Granny, you probably already know what the census will tell you. The 1921 census will have more detail on about:

• Whether a person is disabled 
• Occupations
• Place of work
• Employer
• industry 
• Education - whether part time or full time 
• Marital status - divorce is now included, although this might not be accurate as it wasn't until 1937 that legislation equalised grounds for divorce and therefore it was still in favour of men.[1]
• Orphaned children - whether the mother or father are deceased
• Institutions 
• Hospitals
• Prisons
• Barracks 
• Naval bases
• workhouses
• Royal navy vessels 
• RAF Units overseas 

3. Consider that transcriptions might not be accurate. 

    

As with all the records that are produced online, transcriptions are not always accurate.  For example, on the 1939 National Register for England and Wales, a few reasons meant that my own grandmother took a lot of searching for. Firstly, because she died recently (well recently in their terms, she died in 2003), and was born in 1919, she was still redacted on the document. Luckily, she was living with her parents, so I was able to get that released. Secondly, she was originally transcribed as Dorothy Cameron because of amendments made on the original document. 

1939 National Register for England and Wales - Dorothy Cameron Miller

 

4. Should you rush or wait until it is included in your subscription 

 

Everyone knows that genealogy and family history research is not a cheap hobby. Is it worth paying for records straight away or waiting until they are included in your normal subscription? This will depend entirely on how many records you are looking for and the urgency.  I don't currently have a subscription for Find My Past as I prefer Ancestry (personal preference, if you want me to write a blog on the reasons why I can write one, but it won't be that interesting, let me know in the comments) so even if the records were included in the subscription, it would be an additional cost to me. Also, for my family history research, there's not that much urgency. The 1921 census is not really going to tell me much about my immediate lines that I don't already know and will probably more useful for breaking down a few brick walls further down the line. This, personally, isn't that urgent.  For my PhD, on the other hand, there are a few who were not included on the 1911 census due to taking part in the No Vote, No Census Boycott led by Emmeline Pankhurst.  These should appear on the 1921 census, and this, along with more information about employers and the balance of occupations should make many of my case studies more visible and therefore making the source material more valuable. 

 

As a result, I see this resource as being like the probate service (which is currently £1.50 per download). How much I will need will depend on how detailed the transcriptions are. For example, on Ancestry, some details are not available unless you click on the original image. Find My Past have said that they have ensured that there will be enough to identify people from an initial search so hopefully this will allow to keep the costs down a bit. 

 

At the moment, they are not making any indication of how long it will be before it becomes part of the subscription. When the 1939 National Register was released in 2015 it was on a similar pay per view basis for everyone. It became part of the Find My Past subscription in 2017 the Ancestry subscription in 2018 and presumably, this will be similar.[2]  Going on that timeline, it will be available on a Find My Past subscription in 2023 and Ancestry the following year.  This means that also though my deadline for my PhD is October 2025, I will probably need much of the information before it goes onto the subscriptions.  There is always another option which is to visit The National Archive at Kew but again the cost of this will probably add up to more than the amount of records I need. 

Am I frustrated at the costs? Not really. The 1911 Census and the 1939 National Register were released in a similar way and I'm more than grateful that these records have been digitised for us. Will I be rushing to check the records? Probably. However, I will be more analytical in what records I consider until the records are including in the subscription to keep the costs down and that would be my recommendation to you all. 

Happy Researching! 

 

 

 

 

---

[1] For more information on this see Pat Thane, Happy Families? History and Family Policy, (London: The British Academy, 2010) especially chp. 2

[2] ‘Inside the 1939 Register’, Lost Cousins Newsletter, (2017) https://www.lostcousins.com/newsletters2/inside1939.htm [accessed 10 November 2021]