The Public Record Office (PRO) had doubled the number of servers in anticipation of the demand. However, the 1901 census was placed online at 9:00 AM GMT. At noon, a PRO spokeswoman said, "We have had more than a million hits since it went online. The system is overloading and we ask people to be patient. All we can suggest is to keep trying."

The census was conducted a few weeks after the death of Queen Victoria, as Britain was beginning a new era under the rule of King Edward VII. The 1901 UK census lists the names, ages, addresses, and mental health of more than 32 million people. It provides the first public look at details that have been extracted from 1.5 million pages of handwritten census returns for residents of England and Wales. Alison Webster, Public Record Office project manager, said: "The census returns are our most popular documents and making them available on the internet means that anyone can access information on their ancestors, the history of their house and their local area, as well as gaining an insight into the social and economic conditions of the time. All this without the trouble and expense of traveling to London. We hope this will be the first of many censuses to be digitized and plan to put the 1891 census returns online."

The 1901 census forms asked respondents for their name, address, age, and occupation. The forms also asked them to list the state of their mental health, reporting whether they are deaf and dumb, blind, lunatic, an imbecile, or feeble-minded. More than ninety thousand individuals are listed as "lunatics, imbeciles, or feeble-minded people."

The 1901 census includes the name of the Queen Mother, then eight months old. She is listed as Elizabeth Angela Bowes-Lyon, with her address listed as Walden, Herts. A spelling mistake or poor handwriting appears to have misspelled her middle name with an "i," spelling it as Angelia.

Others found in the 1901 UK census include comedian Charlie Chaplin, listed as a "music hall artiste," while legendary cricketer W.G. Grace is described as a "physician and secretary of the London County Cricket Club." Other famous names to appear include French artist Claude Monet, author H.G. Wells, author J.R.R. Tolkien, Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, and nurse Florence Nightingale.

Of course, data transcription is never perfect, and some enumerators’ shortcuts don’t make the job easier. Genealogist Jeanne Bunting points out, "If anyone is researching the name DITTO, there are 39 of them in the index to the 1901 census… . One of them was even born in Ditto Ditto!!" Jeanne’s experience proves that there is never a substitute for original records. Luckily, digitized images of the original forms are also available online at the Public Record Office site.

Users logging onto the site will be able to search under several categories, including name, place, and address. You can search by first name, last name, gender, or age (plus or minus a number of years). An advanced search also allows the user to search by marital status, occupation, and relation to head of the family. There are also searches for locations, institutions (hospitals, barracks), and maritime vessels. For a cost of 50 pence (about 72 cents in U.S. currency), users can look at the transcribed details from the census return. Another 50 pence buys the details of all other people listed at that address. You can also look at a digital image of the census return for 75 pence. The money raised will help to fund the digitizing of other censuses. The Public Record Office has already begun work on building a similar site for the 1891 census, which is expected to be available to the public next year.

If you have ancestors or other family living in England or Wales during 1901, you will want to look at these online transcribed records. English and Welsh residents may also be interested to find who lived in their house in 1901.

With so many genealogists trying to access this site, you may find the site to be unavailable. In fact, at the time these words are being written, a disclaimer on the site says, "Due to overwhelming demand the technical project team for the 1901 Census site has had to place access restrictions to the site. This will mean that some users will not be able to currently access the service." That’s no surprise to experienced online genealogists, as the same thing happened when the LDS FamilySearch.org site first appeared online, as well as with the Ellis Island immigration database. Both of these sites were virtually unusable in the first week or two of operation as they were flooded with genealogists seeking information. Both eventually settled down and are now easily accessible at any hour of the day or night. I suspect the same will soon be true of the 1901 UK census results on the British Public Record Office’s Web site.

You can view the 1901 UK census returns at: www.pro.gov.uk

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