Completeness of 1861-91 Census

davidm_uk · Post by **davidm_uk** » 12 Feb 2006 23:32

I have found my wifes great grandparents and children in the 1901 census (St Lukes in London) but can find no likely matches in earlier census' for parents or children. From a family bible discovered this weekend the GG grandfather was born in a very very poor and notorious area of East London (near Golden Lane) and it occured to me that maybe the census' were very incomplete for these areas. From descriptions I've read of the conditions there I can't imagine many enumerators risking going in there!
Any views on whether this might explain their absence in the listing?
Thanks, David.

ID:1352

barry1936 · Post by **barry1936** » 15 Feb 2006 09:40

It may depend on how you are conducting your search? I have found Ancestry.com very poor at its relevance ratings (amongst other dissatisfactions) I can give chapter and verse on specific searches where in spite of completing every box with accurate information, the match was only three star or in one case one star. That was after going through no less than 1628 four and five star matches, few of which even warranted two stars, with dates as far as 10 years either side of the exact date and birth places anywhere in the UK and residence places as far away as the USA!! The secret is to ignore the star system and explore every match, no matter how many thousands and no matter how complete and accurate your input data is. I also found that removing accurate input data could improve the matching, which is totally illogical. By removing the death details from one search, immediately revealed a four star entry from the 1871 Census! Alternatively, where I was reasonably certain of a persons location at the census time I manually scoured the images available on Ancestry.com. I also found using Ancestry.co.uk sometimes produced a different result to Ancestry.com!!!

davidm_uk · Post by **davidm_uk** » 15 Feb 2006 15:45

Barry. Thanks for that information, sounds like I should persevere with the searches, although I too have struggled to understand the logic (or lack of) behind Ancestrys search engine. I also seem to find quite a few census images that bear no relation to the names given on the index which pointed to the image. Ho hum, on we go [confused]
David

Marpag · Post by **Marpag** » 16 Feb 2006 23:57

The problem with Ancestry.co.uk is the transcriber reading the enumerator's writing incorrectly. If they make the mistake with the surname, e.g. Milton or Hilton for Wilton, all the people at the house will be transcribed incorrectly. Of the six censuses from 1851 to 1901, I quite often find only half the censuses for a particular family. It's best to try a few alternatives to spelling when you draw a blank after your initial search.

Regards, Marpag.

philjo · Post by **philjo** » 17 Feb 2006 13:30

I found several occasions where ither the surname or place of birth was spelt incorrectly by either the ennumerator, or the Ancestry transcription.

I found several people by just putting in the first name, place of birth (or county) and age to within 2 years - often a name comes up with a surname which is spelt slightly differently to how it should be.

Jeremy

ganstey · Post by **ganstey** » 17 Feb 2006 13:51

It also doesn't help when your ancestors were variously know by either their first or second (or in one case third!) forename [mad]

If they moved around the country, or countries, then sometimes what the enumerator writes down can be very different from what you would expect. Some of my ancestors come from Organford in Dorset. I've seen it written as Organford, Oranford, Ganford, Orgenford as well as various other variations that transcribers have come up with.

My suggestion would be to start by searching on as few criteria as you think you can get away with, and slowly narrrow it down. If that doesn't work, then think about how names could be spelt phonetically (taking into account accents).

Mind you, I still have two of my ancestors who appear to be completely missing from two consecutive censuses, and then magically re-appear. But maybe they were abroad.

Graham

Post by **nsw** » 17 Feb 2006 17:34

Another last resort technique to use with Ancestry census indexes is to just browse through the census pages for the area you believe the family were living. You don't have to use the search facilities at all.

barry1936 · Post by **barry1936** » 18 Feb 2006 14:21

Plenty of people explaining the errors in Ancestry but no one complimenting them? Has anybody any experience of The Genealogist.co.uk? The claim high accuracy because they use UK volunteers with local knowledge to compile their indices.

Although poor transcription may explain some of Ancestry's errors, I don't think there is any excuse for index errors. e.g. looked for Noah Williams in the Birth Index and was referred to an image for Upton to Urwin!!! - among several other similar instances.

There are also several gaps in their BMD Index. If you go to http://content.ancestry.co.uk/Browse/li ... 8965&path= there is a list of years. Apart from missing odd years, there is nothing between 1865 and 1880! How did I find this page? By accident like I have stumbled on other hidden links in Ancestry. Why don't they reveal links to all their useful pages?

Barry

davidm_uk · Post by **davidm_uk** » 18 Feb 2006 15:15

To Barry1936.
Very useful tip about Ancestrys BMD index, thanks!
How about posting the other useful links that you've found on here, maybe others could then add to it. It could maybe form an article.

barry1936 · Post by **barry1936** » 18 Feb 2006 17:33

Willingly, if I can find them again!!!

Post by **nsw** » 18 Feb 2006 17:51

Plenty of people explaining the errors in Ancestry but no one complimenting them?

The point of this thread wasn't to compliment Ancestry and you will see plenty of people praising them in at least one other thread in this forum.

I think the ability to be able to search all the England/Wales census records from 1851 to 1901 with full images is well worth the cost, particularly when compared with the expense of travelling. Despite some indexing errors I have found several hundred census records for my ancestors.

Although poor transcription may explain some of Ancestry's errors, I don't think there is any excuse for index errors.

The BMD indexes are free on Ancestry and are also described as being Beta (i.e. being tested). I think these two facts alone give them very good excuses for index errors. I used to have to travel a round-trip of 60 miles to get access to the BMD on microfilm, it took ages to load the reel, find the correct page, etc. Now it is easy to do in the comfort of your own home and the index errors are easy to work around.

vliet · Post by **vliet** » 19 Feb 2006 12:18

I've made comments somewhere else on our site, about searches, subscriptions and the like. For all their faults, if one utilises the features provided and works through the information collected, then ALL the sites, free or not, provide a heck of a lot of extremely valuable research material.
Being a tight old so-and-so (as my wife refers to me!)I appreciate value for money and have yet to regret ANY of the subscription, online purchases and so on. Therefore I suppose I am praising the likes of Ancestry! And, if you care to look at other comments, I take back what I wrote about 1837 online and I've e-mailed them an apology referring to some of the comments I had previously sent them.
ANT information or facts collected from ANY source, be it online or in some repository or other, is worth its weight in gold, somewhere along the line, and should be recorded and used to further our quests.
Hope you don't think I'm trying to preach to the converted as I've only being doing this for about 4 years.
I'm getting there though!
vliet[cool]

johnhanson · Post by **johnhanson** » 27 Feb 2006 06:43

Have ben rather busy recently but hopefully this will help.

There are more indexes around to the census than Ancestry, even online.

For 1841 and 1871 try British Origins http://www.britishorigins.com not complete but getting there slowly!!!

For 1861 (complete) and 1891 (part) try http://www.1837online.com Has a much more flexible search engine, including the ability to look for two people in the same household and you can use a wild card at the begining of a word

The Genealogist http://www.thegenealogist.co.uk has many indexes including London for most years

The FreeCEN project (like FreeBMD) http://www.freecen.org.uk

Look at the census pages on http://www.ukbmd.org.uk

And you could also try http://www.allcensusrecords.com

Regards
John Hanson

archierex · Post by **archierex** » 06 Mar 2006 14:27

All of this starts with the transcriber and having entered over 6,000 names pertaining to a Cornish town I feel proud of my entries.
It was not easy, but nothing worthwhle ever is, and my mistakes in the beginning made me feel like kicking myself. My mistakes were picked up by the checkers who were in turn checked . I also noted any name or word that I could not read. The regulation for 'read' was to transcribe what the Enumerator had written!
Easy you may think but how many times did I want to spell Phillis with a 'Y'?
It taught me that I was not infallible and neither was the enumerator, not even the checkers of many years of experience but we all did our best.
In the final analysis I had to drop out because the last enumerator of the complete piece had a handwriting that left me nonplussed. Really, I could only read about one word in three and this for the year 1871 and that is considered to be a period where the handwriting was good ( this I had found was true and was better than what I have seen of modern hands.
All I can say is forget whosoever puts the information on-line, contact one of the unpaid transcribing services and have a go yourself. You will never regret it.

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