1921 census (General)

by fredb , Sunday, July 12, 2009, 15:56 (5687 days ago) @ pclark

Exactly Pete, the information is out there, census just help in the same way as buying a certificate confirms you are tracing the right family. I bet there are people reading this who like me found something out in the 1911 census and told their older surving family and they love it, they want to know more "Oh that's what granny would never talk about!" There are 2.7 million people over 80 in the UK, and I bet they would all love to see the first census they appeared in, their parents handwriting, maybe a brother or sister who died young but they never knew, it's our families, our information.

One guy doesn't agree at all with me, this was his last post -

Fred, I don't think you can even begin to equate records being carelessly mislaid, to the release of data on millions of individuals for all to see, so I'm not going to waste time discussing it. (*I didn't equate anything really, I just said that more and more current (important) information is being stolen, even the police are selling details to newspapers, phone tapping etc.)

As I said before, it is your right to ask for information under the Freedom of Information Act, and I am not objecting to that at all.

As for the actual publishing of the data - I don't think you've even begun to think about that. At the moment, the 1921 census consists of millions of pieces of paper, just as the 1911 census did. To make this available to the public would be a major undertaking, requiring the same work and the same (if not greater) expense, because the 1921 census will be bigger than the 1911 census.(*My answer was thay did for every census up until 1911 why stop. They didn't produce the 1911 census for fun, they did it surely as a means of making money. One guy said that with digital photography it would be easy to edit anything considered sensitive)

Re inspecting pages from the census in local centres - that would require an enormous amount of work, because the 1921 census only exists in one place, and to copy it for public use would be a major undertaking. (*I don't agree that it's impossible, or not feasable)

If criminals can find information contained in the 1921 census elsewhere, then I expect you can too (*I had said that criminals don't need census to get information about us ie identitiy fraud)

Please feel free to agree or disagree fred