1911 Census

This is a somewhat belated post because the subscription to the 1911 data was a Christmas present to myself. What a fantastic dataset though. findmypast.co.uk (and whoever transcribed it for them and sorted the search engine) are to be commended. It has been so much easier to find people than all of the previous systems I have used for earlier data. I particularly like the ability to search for two people that you think are at the same address, it so speeds up the sifting through records for people with common names (is there any other sort?).

But the 'piece de resistance', nothing to do with the transcribers, was the CSO's decision to ask (a) how long married women had been married and (b) how many children they had had and how many were surviving. I appreciate that this was an additional cost to gather and really was a luxury, but how brilliant it is for we genealogists. Of course it is as flaky as any other data item on the form, as I have found; but it is a great pointer to whether you have researched hard enough all the children or made a mistake and included two families into one.