1901 Census

It's been a rocky road for the 1901 Census. On its launch, the site was so popular that it wobbled under the weight of traffic and was shut down. Now it's back, and it's definitely been worth the wait. It's free to search, and the data is cheap to download. It's 50p to view each transcribed piece of data, 50p to view a list of all the people living in a certain house, and 75p to view the original census documents. There's a vast store of information here, and we got a buzz from looking at documents more than 100 years old. The census, which covers England and Wales and was taken on 31 March 1901, includes details of 32 million people - including those living in hospitals, ships and barracks. Unlike many genealogy sites, it's a doddle to use. There were no matches for 'Arthur Trippett' (my grandmother's father-in-law), but a search for male Trippetts in the Sheffield area found 12 potential ancestors. At the two-up-two-down 64 Leigh Street I found nine Trippetts, plus a lodger. For 50p I got a transcript of the census data including house number, street name, head of the family, marital status, age, profession and where they were born. There's also a piece of very un-PC data revealing whether they were blind, 'deaf and dumb', 'imbecile' or 'feeble-minded'. The good old days, eh? You can also go digging for famous names - Charlie Chaplin, the Queen Mum, JRR Tolkien and HG Wells are all here.