By way of background, the U.K. Public Record Office launched a new service in January of this year that was to make the 1901 census records available worldwide for a modest fee. The Census Enumeration Books were to be scanned and the images put online on a pay-as-you-view basis. They were also to be indexed -- a name index for free and a full indexed entry on a pay-as-you-view basis.

Within minutes after becoming available, anxious genealogists and others who are seeking information about UK residents from over a century ago overloaded the site. The website virtually ground to a halt as more than a million users tried to log on and trace their family history during the first three hours. You can read more about the site’s launch in my 9 January 2002 newsletter.

The following week I again wrote about the continuing problems in this newsletter. The Public Record Office (PRO) announced that they had ordered more Web servers to handle the unexpected crush of genealogists who wanted to access the online transcribed records. The PRO announcement said, in part:

The site remains unable to meet continuing levels of demand. The PRO has agreed with QinetiQ's technical team that searching of the database and downloading of images will not be available for one week to allow enhancements to take place. The Census site will provide updated information and help about using the Census service. Meanwhile the normal 1901 Census microform services continue to be available at the PRO Kew and local record offices and public libraries across the country.

The 1901 Census On-Line service is available at the Family Records Centre and at Kew. Access is limited to one hour per user by ticket. Tickets are available on a first-come first-served basis and no advance bookings can be taken.

I wrote those two articles in the first few weeks of January. Nearly four months later, the site still is "unable to meet continuing levels of demand." For a few weeks you could only access the site from certain Family Records Centres and at Kew. However, by late January the site was shut down entirely, and a notice said that the database was undergoing "enhancements and rigorous testing." There certainly must be a lot of testing going on as the database has been undergoing "enhancements and rigorous testing" for more than three months now. The PRO website at www.pro.gov.uk still says, "We apologise that the testing is taking much longer than anticipated but it is vital that we have a reliable service for users."

A second issue also has arisen: that of the quality of the indexes created by QinetiQ’s subcontractors. Those who have succeeded in accessing the database claim that the error rate is outrageous. The Federation of Family History Society’s website states "initially 85% of the transcribed data failed to meet the (unspecified) accuracy rate required."

The 1901 UK Census was indexed and placed online by QinetiQ. That organization is a part of DERA, the British Government's "Defence Evaluation and Research Agency." QinetiQ is a wholly government-owned corporation, according to the website at: www.qinetiq.com.

QinetiQ originally planned to have the indexes created by residents of the British prison system. However, eventually much of the indexing work was actually done in Sri Lanka. There is some disagreement as to how much of the indexing was done in that country. The PRO's own advisory council, with members drawn from the Society of Genealogists, the Federation of Family History Society, the Guild Of One Name Studies and others, reportedly was told that only a small percentage would be so transcribed and that these would be mostly the Welsh returns. Yet other documents state that 78 percent of the total indexing was done on the Indian sub-continent. Whatever the source, those who have used the 1901 online census during its brief availability claim that the error rate is much too high to be acceptable. It appears that those doing the transcription work often were unable to read the one-hundred-year-old handwriting.

Barney Tyrwhitt-Drake queried his MP about this. Mr. David Lidington (Aylesbury) then asked the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, pursuant to her answer of 20^th March, Official Report, column 414W, on the 1901 census, what steps were taken to familiarize employees based in India and Sri Lanka with the handwriting and spelling used by enumerators of the 1901 census. Ms. Rosie Winterton, Parliamentary Secretary, responded:

The data input company based in India and Sri Lanka demonstrated that it had in-house skills at interpreting late 19th century handwriting by producing test results of a very high level of accuracy prior to the award of the contract. In order to augment these skills, ten Public Record Office staff with expertise in interpreting census enumeration returns spent, between them, twenty weeks at the company's bases in India and Sri Lanka. They gave training sessions on the detailed transcription rules, on the formation of the handwriting to be found in the returns and on the etymology of Welsh place names. They also responded to queries raised by individual operators while they were transcribing the returns.

Public Record Office staff ensured that keying operators had access to appropriate reference sources such as English and Welsh gazetteers and name listings. They also provided supervisors with detailed feedback on errors encountered during the quality assessment of the transcribed data to seek to prevent such errors re-occurring.

The transcription rule for most of the data found in the 1901 census returns was to transcribe it exactly as it appeared. As a result, there was no requirement to translate 1901 spelling to its modern day equivalent.

Barney Tyrwhitt-Drake and others who have used the indexes claim that the above response is misleading. Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake writes:

The only quantitative assessment of the transcription accuracy of the process so far has been the one published in Computers in Genealogy by John Dawson (vol 7. No.5/6, p.248) using data from the 1891 pilot of Norfolk, which was prepared to the same protocols. In this article he concludes "There must be serious doubts about the usefulness of a product such as the 1891 Census Pilot of Norfolk when so many obvious errors of transcription remain." I can only comment on my subjective experience of editing both the 1891 pilot and the 1901 itself as well as the errors found in my one 50 pence download on 1 Jan 2002. I think John Dawson may be guilty of understatement.

There has been some head-scratching about the work of the "ten Public Record Office staff with expertise in interpreting census enumeration returns [who] spent, between them, twenty weeks at the company's bases in India and Sri Lanka." It would appear that their time spent in India and Sri Lanka did not result in quality indexes.

A third issue revolves around the use of prepaid vouchers. There were to be two ways of paying for use of the 1901 U.K. Census database: one was with a credit card and the other was with a prepaid voucher. The PRO appointed a large number of resellers for the prepaid vouchers and offered each reseller a discount on each £1000 of vouchers sold. It is estimated that more than £100,000 ($160,000 U.S.) worth of vouchers were sold. The vouchers remain worthless as they pay for access that is unavailable. To their credit, the PRO has offered refunds for those who have given up and now simply want their money back.

Genealogy groups across the U.K. and elsewhere are now mobilizing. Many have written to their Members of Parliament (MPs) demanding action. No 10 Downing Street (the home of the Prime Minister) accepts e-petitions. A suitable website has been set up for those concerned to add their signatures; there are 1,200 signatures there already and the list is growing. It will be open until 7 May for signing, and then sent to Downing Street. You can add your name to the petition at: http://www.activeservice.co.uk/petition/

This "grass roots" uprising is continuing, and you can find a lot of information about it online. You can start at the Federation of Family History Society’s website at: http://www.ffhs.org.uk/1901B.htm. Also look at: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&q=1901+Census+Mailing+List&btnG=Google+Search. A mailing list also has been established about the 1901 Census. To subscribe, send an e-mail to UK-1901-CENSUS-L-request@rootsweb.com and in the body of the message just write one word: subscribe. Do not write anything else, not even your signature.

This should be a fascinating story to watch in the coming months. My thanks to Jeanne Bunting, Barney Tyrwhitt-Drake, Linda Jones, and others for all the information they supplied about the U.K. 1901 census fiasco.

• Read the next article in this issue.
  
• Return to the Table of Contents