Talk:England Census

How Can the England Census be improved? Leave your comments

I am rewriting and organzing the England Census Page. Feel free to click the edit button on the right side here and leave an message pertaining to this project or task.

A few things that would be worth adding:


 * The exact dates of the census for each of the years for which it's been published. This is often very important to genealogy (eg it can narrow down when a person was born or died).
 * At least a mention of the pre-1841 censuses. Very few records of these survive, but the few that do can be gold dust! Kent FHS have published a few on fiche for instance.
 * Some of the reasons that information in censuses may be wrong. Ages are often wrong (for instance, people who take much younger spouses often find that the years fall away from themselves as well!) Places given as the birthplace may be approximate and may not be the same place as the person was baptised. Often the further people are living away from their birth place, the less precise they are.
 * Perhaps it's also worth mentioning that the way it worked, at least in the earlier years, was that the head of household wrote down the information about all the people therein. Some were more conscientious than others; some felt it indelicate to ask ladies their ages; some with lodgers seem to have guessed.

I could add some of the above if it would be useful. Stevewest 15:11, 6 March 2009 (UTC)