S&N Genealogy Supplies has released a huge new resource on
CD-ROM disks: the 1891 census of greater London. This new offering fills thirty-eight
CD-ROM disks. No, that is not a typo error; it really does fill thirty-eight
CDs! For those with a DVD player in their computers, a four-disk DVD version
is available. These CD-ROM disks contain approximately two-hundred thousand
images of the original census records. Best of all, the manufacturer says that
the CD-ROM disks operate on both Windows and Macintosh systems. They will even
operate well on older Windows 3.1 systems. In fact, I found that they also work
on Linux systems as well. I had a chance to use these CD-ROM disks this week
on a Windows 2000 system and on a Linux system and found that they worked well
on both operating systems.
The 1891 census was taken on the 5th of April. The
enumerators (census takers) recorded the following information for each person:
full name, exact age, relationship to the head of household, sex, occupation,
parish and county of birth, medical disabilities, and employment status. The
census is arranged by registration district and sub-district with street indexes
for each district. If you have "end of line" ancestors residing in
the greater London area in 1891, you need to look at this census! This census
will tell you the location and year of each person’s birth. You should
note, however, that there is no name index available for the 1891 census. You
need to know the address where your ancestor(s) lived. If you only know the
area in which he or she lived, you can read all the pages for that area until
you find the person you seek.
The 1891 census returns for greater London include the areas of
Paddington, Kensington, Fulham, Chelsea, St George Hanover Square, Westminster,
Marylebone, Hampstead, Pancras, Islington, Hackney, St Giles, Strand, Holborn,
London City, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, St George in the East,
Stepney, Mile End Old Town, Poplar, St Saviour, Southwark, Lambeth, Wandsworth,
Camberwell, Greenwich, Lewisham and Woolwich. Each CD-ROM disk contains a street
index that links to the appropriate registration district and the page for the
chosen street. Once I located a street in the index, I could click on that street
name, and the first page of that street’s census returns displayed a second
or so later.
All of the images on the 1891 London Census CD-ROM disks are stored
in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. Adobe is an excellent choice, as it allows the
images to be viewed on Windows, Macintosh and Linux systems as well as a number
of other operating systems. The CD-ROM disks include the Windows software for
viewing Adobe Acrobat files; users of other operating systems may download the
Adobe Acrobat viewer at no charge from www.adobe.com.
If you have used Adobe Acrobat Viewer before, you will instantly
feel "at home" with these CD-ROM disks. Once images are displayed
on your screen, you can zoom in and out, move the image around, and even rotate
the image 90 degrees, something that can be useful when printing.
Viewing the original records on your computer screen is a fascinating
experience. British schools apparently taught excellent penmanship; the pages
I looked at all seemed to be easy to read. I am sure there must be exceptions
to this someplace in these 38 CD-ROM disks, but the thirty or so pages that
I looked at were all easily readable. You can see an example of one of the pages
at: ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Genealogy_Supplies/censamp.htm
One page that I looked at did have a corner torn off, thereby
losing the place of birth information for about ten people. A few other pages
had smudges on them, but nothing too drastic. In short, these scanned images
appear to be crystal-clear reproductions of original census pages. I could zoom
in and easily read the handwriting on my computer’s screen.
The images printed on my local printer, however, were always formatted
to fit an entire page onto one sheet of paper. The result was a bit difficult
to read since the handwriting was tiny on the printed page. This seemed to be
a minor drawback, however, as the on-screen images could be zoomed and manipulated
in so many ways.
S&N Genealogy Supplies seems to have a winner with this excellent
new electronic resource. The company also states that they plan to release London
census records on CD-ROM for the 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 enumerations.
The London 1891 Census sells for £49.95 (roughly $71.33 in U.S.
funds) plus taxes and shipping. That works out to approximately £1.31 ($1.87)
per disk for each of the thirty-eight disks. For more information about the
London 1891 Census on CD-ROM, or to order these disks online via a safe and
secure online order form, look at: ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Genealogy_Supplies/London.htm.
Dick Eastman Online
