Family Historian User Group

I have started running through my project tracking down all those that should be in the 1921 Census in England. I have been surprised at the number of people I have been unable to find given that i have them in both the 1911 and again in 1939. I have also found a few horrendous mis-transcriptions that I have reported.

Does anyone have any tricks for tracking down these missing individuals?

Found some using wildcards, and others by address search.

Yes, I have one that is incorrectly transcribed on nearly all censuses, but there seems to be more on 1921. It will be interesting to see if other "future" providers do a better job.

So, as there are no other sites to check on yet, as well as those other suggestions:
- sometimes just look for forenames and no surname, especially if you can limit the geographic area.

Do you have a subscription which includes the 1921 census? It can make it easier to plough through and check likely candidates.

If you have them on the 1911 and/or 1939, I would suggest checking those addresses to see if they're still there (there is a tab at the top of the search box to search addresses). Finding the address itself isn't always trivial as street addresses/house names have also been mis-transcribed in some places.

My other two tips would be to search by first name if there is someone in the household with a relatively unusual name (although these are more likely to be mis-transcribed in my experience), and to order the result set by Where Born by clicking on the header so it sorts alphabetically, then scroll down to where you think that might be.

In other censuses I have sometimes found it useful to look to see if they were staying with a relative who might be found under a name which may be less likely to be miss-transcribed.
For instance:

• they were staying with the wife's parents
• they were staying with a brother-in-law (i.e. a married sister)
• a sister-in-law (wife' sister found either under married or maiden name - husband's sister if married living under her married name)

jimlad68 wrote: ↑

16 Dec 2022 13:06

Yes, I have one that is incorrectly transcribed on nearly all censuses, but there seems to be more on 1921. It will be interesting to see if other "future" providers do a better job. ...

Future providers of the 1921 England & Wales will unquestionably do a better job because they'll be able to look at the full page to get a better hint on the handwriting. As far as I know, the FMP indexers of the 1921 E&W were under the same strict rules as the 1939 indexers and could only see a column(?) at a time until the 100y period was up on 1 Jan 2022. Only at that point was FMP allowed to see all the full pages, so only at that point could they do any meaningful quality checks. By this point, release was just days away.

In contrast the 1921 for Scotland was such a shambles contractually, that my understanding is that by the time the indexers got their hands on it, the 100y deadline had passed. ScotlandsPeople appear to now have other issues though...

So you can have accuracy or timing... Not both.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions all of which I had or have tried.

I suppose this post was more of frustration having paid to upgrade my subscription I have been disappointed with some that I can't find and pleasantly surprised at the additional information that I have found for others.

I thought it was one row at a time, but either way, without being able to compare letters elsewhere on the page when unsure, it did make the transcription process quite challenging.

I tend to use first names and approximate ages OR, if I'm fairly certain where someone lived, I search by street name.

AdrianBruce wrote: ↑

16 Dec 2022 15:31

<SNIP>
Future providers of the 1921 England & Wales will unquestionably do a better job because they'll be able to look at the full page to get a better hint on the handwriting. As far as I know, the FMP indexers of the 1921 E&W were under the same strict rules as the 1939 indexers and could only see a column(?) at a time until the 100y period was up on 1 Jan 2022. Only at that point was FMP allowed to see all the full pages, so only at that point could they do any meaningful quality checks. By this point, release was just days away.<SNIP>

AdrianBruce wrote: ↑

16 Dec 2022 15:31

Future providers of the 1921 England & Wales will unquestionably do a better job because they'll be able to look at the full page to get a better hint on the handwriting.

I don't think this is the way transcribers are taught to work - certainly not how I was taught anyway, but that was some time ago. If you look at how the FreeBMD guidelines work, I'm sure they say not to do exactly what you have described, although admittedly they have a different system for recording ambiguities involving brackets and underscores. The way you describe is how you or I might go about deciphering some tricky text, but it's not how rooms full of people in off-shored typing pools work.

I’ve got two examples of married women missing from the family listings (checked with the original image) and not apparently anywhere else on an index search. I believe that there was an orchestrated campaign by the suffragettes to boycott the census, but I’m not aware of any rebel tendencies for either of these ladies, who were both working class Kensington/Fulham (my maternal grandmother and a paternal aunt who I never knew).

Mark1834 wrote: ↑

16 Dec 2022 18:21

... I believe that there was an orchestrated campaign by the suffragettes to boycott the census, ...

Wasn't that the 1911, or was there still some disgruntlement given that not every adult woman yet had the vote?

satyricon wrote: ↑

16 Dec 2022 18:04

AdrianBruce wrote: ↑

16 Dec 2022 15:31

Future providers of the 1921 England & Wales will unquestionably do a better job because they'll be able to look at the full page to get a better hint on the handwriting.

I don't think this is the way transcribers are taught to work - certainly not how I was taught anyway, but that was some time ago. ...

Interesting!

fhtess65 wrote: ↑

16 Dec 2022 16:26

I thought it was one row at a time, but either way, without being able to compare letters elsewhere on the page when unsure, it did make the transcription process quite challenging....]

The 1939 Register was certainly one column at a time, the objective being to stop indexers learning anything about living people. Whether the 1921 followed suit, I'm not sure - it certainly did something above and beyond swearing people to silence.

I have a few examples where the whole family were listed under the surname of the first entry when they actually had different surnames which were correctly listed on the images. My great grandparents are listed under my great grandmother's maiden name because her brother lived with them as it was his house and he was the first entry. As his surname was more common than the other, it took a bit of time to track them down even though I knew where they were. I've found this the case on a few entries.

AdrianBruce wrote: ↑

16 Dec 2022 22:26

Whether the 1921 followed suit, I'm not sure - it certainly did something above and beyond swearing people to silence.

In an earlier post in 1921 census (21223)

brianlummis wrote: ↑

04 Dec 2022 21:44

If you have not already seen the article, I would recommend that you read "Putting the 1921 Census online - the inside story" in the Lost Cousins newsletter at https://www.lostcousins.com/newsletters ... htm#Rigden which throws a bit of light as to why there are so many errors. The transcribers did not have the benefit of seeing the whole page and the supporting schedules and couldn't always find a similar character on the piece they were using, to act as a comparison.

Edit: Apologies - I have quoted the wrong paragraph and there is an indication of how the census was transcribed in the one above titled "Don’t blame the transcribers, they’re doing their best" - I seem to recall that in one of the newsletters there was also a description of what the transcribers faced when they were presented with their portion of the document.

Aye Adrian,

In contrast the 1921 for Scotland was such a shambles contractually, that my understanding is that by the time the indexers got their hands on it, the 100y deadline had passed. ScotlandsPeople appear to now have other issues though...

Would you care to expand on your final sentence, from your posting to this thread of 16 Dec 2022 15:31?

Thank you for your time.

Good health, BillR

themoudie wrote: ↑

26 Dec 2022 22:27

... Would you care to expand on your final sentence, from your posting to this thread of 16 Dec 2022 15:31? ...

"Other issues" referred to the problems that ScotlandsPeople were having, as documented by Chris Paton on his Scottish Genes blog. The last report from him (that I can see) was on https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2022 ... t-out.html where he said that ScotlandsPeople had been

working flat out to try to get its platform back into good working order after its recent nightmare of an update three weeks ago

Whether there was any connection at all with the 1921 work, I've no idea - if there was, I suspect that it was indirect, but that just my personal guess.

Aye Adrian,

Thank you for your personal view of the problems that ScotlandsPeople may have been suffering.

My apologies for not reading and replying sooner, but I'm practising the old Chinese spinning plate trick at present!

Good health, BillR