Newsletter – 21st
January 2022
Do you have Scottish
ancestry? LAST CHANCE
Transcription Tuesday COMING SOON
Finding the right
household in the 1921 Census
Just 10 days to win ENDS 31ST JANUARY
If you want to win a
prize, you have to tell me!
Viewing the 1921
Census in Manchester
The LostCousins
newsletter is usually published 2 or 3 times a month. To access the previous issue
(dated 10th January) click here; to find earlier articles use the customised Google search between
this paragraph and the next (it searches ALL of the newsletters since February
2009, so you don't need to keep copies):
To go to the main
LostCousins website click the logo at the top of this newsletter. If you're not
already a member, do join - it's FREE, and you'll get an email to alert you
whenever there's a new edition of this newsletter available!
Would
you like to be repaid all the money you spend on 1921 census images between now
and the end of January (maximum £175)? For a chance of winning this unique prize,
one of many prizes that I'm giving away in my New Year Competition, log into your
LostCousins account and click the personal 1921 Census link you'll find near
the top of your My
Summary page. (Click it at again at the start of each session to make
sure your purchases are recorded.)
After
the end of the month one lucky member will be chosen at random,
but taking into account the number of competition entries each person
has made. Every direct ancestor or blood relative you add to your My
Ancestors page before the end of January counts as one entry, or two when
you input relatives from any of the 1881 censuses that we use (Canada,
Scotland, or England & Wales).
If
you would like to support LostCousins but are not interested in winning your
money back there's no need to log-in to your account, instead you use this link
to go to the 1921 Census.
Do you have Scottish ancestry? LAST CHANCE
25th
January is Burns Night – the 263rd anniversary of the birth of Scotland's great
poet – so there couldn't be a more appropriate day for Chris Paton, one of the
leading experts in Scottish genealogy, to deliver an exclusive Zoom
presentation entitled Scottish Research Resources Before 1800 to an invited
audience chosen from the LostCousins membership. The talk will begin at 10am London
time, which will allow members in Australia and New Zealand to attend.
If
you'd like to be in that audience there are two things you must do if
you haven't already: first, go to your My Prizes page at the LostCousins
site and indicate your interest in attending; second, add as many relatives as
you can to your My Ancestors page, especially those who were recorded in
any of the 1881 Censuses that we use (Scotland, Canada, England & Wales). Because
the draw is random you'll have a chance of winning
even if you've only entered one relative since the competition began on 10th
December 2021, but the more relatives you enter before the winners are drawn at
9am on Monday morning, the greater your chance of receiving an invite. All of the lucky audience members should have been notified
by noon, London time, on Monday.
Note:
although the 1921 Scotland Census isn't due for release until the second half
of 2022, ScotlandsPeople have this month released an additional year
of births (for 1921), marriages (for 1946), and deaths (for 1971); whereas
those of us with English & Welsh ancestors have to wait a few days for PDF
copies of historic birth and death entries, those lucky Scots can get instant
access for a fraction of the price!
Transcription Tuesday COMING SOON
1st
February 2022 is Transcription Tuesday, Who Do You Think You Are? magazine’s
annual online volunteer event for family historians around the world. While the
growth of online family history websites has made many records more accessible,
millions of important historic documents that could be the key to tracing
someone’s ancestor still only exist in paper form.
Transcription
Tuesday was launched in 2017: every year since then, volunteers have come
together online to support a variety of not-for-profit transcription projects.
It’s a great way to practice your family history skills, and the records often
tell fascinating stories of ordinary people’s lives in history. On the last
Transcription Tuesday, an incredible 100,000 records were transcribed!
For
more details please follow this link.
Last
month dozens of members attended my Zoom presentation DNA for Christmas,
which inspired some to take a DNA test and others to make better use of their
results by following the proven strategies in my DNA
Masterclass.
The
winner of the first prize to be drawn in 2022 is Jane in Australia, who is
looking forward to a one-to-one brick wall-busting session with Dr Janet Few, one
of the leading figures in the world of genealogy, and someone who will be known
to many of you through her books, which include Ten Steps
to a One-Place Study, Barefoot
on the Cobbles, and Sins
as Red as Scarlet: a Devon Town in Turmoil.
Jane
wasn't the first person to be chosen by the random number generator, but
she was the first person to be drawn who had completed their My
Prizes page. As I explained when the competition launched last month, with hundreds
of prizes on offer this year it is absolutely essential
that there is a simple, straightforward way to allocate them to the winners who
would appreciate them most – so please log-in and express your preferences now!
Tip:
this year you can win more than one prize – something that hasn’t been allowed
in previous years.
We're
all used to the head being the first person listed on the household schedule,
or in the enumeration summary book, but it's not always the case – as you can
see from this extract from the 1851 Census (HO107/645/19):
©
Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives and with
the kind permission of Findmypast
Prince
Albert may have been the head of the Royal Household, but when you’re married
to the monarch you’re relegated to second place.
Something else you might notice is that Queen Victoria is recorded as Her
Majesty Alexandrina Victoria – the forenames she was given by her parents – and
the birthplace of Prince Albert is missing (it is, however, shown in the 1861
Census – which took place a few months before the Prince Consort died).
Note:
you can see the full page from 1851 in this guide
at the TNA website.
It's
well known that Edward Jenner, a surgeon from Gloucestershire, was a key figure
in the adoption of vaccination to prevent smallpox, but it's less well-known
that it was another Jenner – William Jenner – who first distinguished between two
other deadly diseases, typhus and typhoid, which were
once thought to have the same cause. However, although both are caused by
bacteria, they are different bacteria, spread in different ways.
In
1861 Dr Jenner was appointed Physician Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, and
later that year he attended Prince Albert, and diagnosed him with typhoid fever
– he died 5 days later, on 14th December. Two of Albert's cousins had died of typhoid
the previous month, which might have swayed Dr Jenner in his diagnosis – as
Albert had suffered from stomach pains in the two years preceding his death it
has been suggested that the actual cause of death might have been a chronic
disease such as Crohn's disease, kidney failure, or abdominal cancer (see Wikipedia).
Finding the right household in the 1921 Census
Although
£3.50 isn't a fortune, nobody wants to spend money on the wrong census
schedule. So I thought it would be useful to run
through some of the techniques I've been using, or that have been suggested by
members:
Although
you might be tempted to think that having identified who is in the household
and noted their birth years and places of birth there's no need to purchase the
census image, those of us who have splashed out can assure you that the extra information
is well worth paying for! But use the link near the top of your My Summary page at the
LostCousins site and you might win back all the money you spend on 1921 images
up to the end of this month (one winner, maximum £175, equivalent to 50 images,
or 55 if you have a Pro subscription to Findmypast).
In
1921 the government published a document entitled The Coming Census
which explained, amongst other things, that:
The object of the census is to obtain
reliable figures of the population of the country, showing how the
population is made up, that is to say of what sorts
and compositions of people it is composed, and how it is distributed through
the local sub-divisions of the country, such as counties, towns, rural districts,
parliamentary divisions, parishes &c.
As the object of the Census is figures, it
is not concerned with the private lives or actions of the individuals counted,
and only asks them questions as to their personal characteristics in order that
they be properly accounted and assigned to the particular
groups of the population in which they ought to be reckoned. For
example, the Census needs to know that Mr. William Smith is a married man aged
49, not because the State proposes to interest itself in Mr Smith's private
life or actions, but solely in order that the number of married men in the
population and the number of men aged 49 in the population may be properly counted.
This information as to the number and
composition of our population is not asked for to gratify curiosity or merely add
to the sum-total of human knowledge. The cost of census-taking is far too great
to be incurred solely to provide interesting facts.
It’s
a salutary reminder that, invaluable as the surviving censuses are for family historians,
they weren't produced for our benefit. You can currently download this and
other documents about the 1921 Census free from The National Archives if you
follow this link.
Tip:
the RG27/9 documents include blank copies of the various census schedules. In
fact, there's so much information that I'm still working my way through it as I
write!
Some of the key pieces
of information I gleaned from the documents in RG27/9 related to column (e) on
the household schedule, which has a dual purpose. For persons aged 15 and over
it shows their marital status, for children under 15 it shows whether their
parents were still alive.
©
Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives and with
the kind permission of Findmypast
Those
of you who are familiar with marriage law in England & Wales will recognise
immediately that there is a conflict – in 1921 it was possible for a girl aged
12 or a boy aged 14 to marry with parental consent, though it was a criminal
offence for a man to have intercourse with a girl below the age of 16, as this Hansard
transcript
reminds us.
The
minimum age at marriage was raised to 16 only in 1929 (and there it remains, although
the government have stated that they plan to raise it to 18 – a somewhat
controversial proposal). So in theory there could be children recorded in the
census who were married, but not shown as such – although the evidence I can
find suggests
that marriage below the age of 16 was extremely rare by the turn of the 20th
century, at least in Scotland.
(It
might be an interesting question to ask Professor Probert when she gives her
talk next month to an invited audience chosen from the LostCousins membership –
are you taking part in my competition, and if so
have you completed your My Prizes page yet?)
I
thought my grandfather had completed his census form incorrectly – against his
eldest daughter Marian (actually Marion) he put 'Both
alive', even though her mother, his first wife, had died when my half-aunt was
just 11 months old. But the Instructions to Registrars (included amongst the
documents mentioned in the previous article) state:
Where, however, a child has a step-parent, the stepfather or stepmother should be regarded
as having taken the place of the natural father or mother as the case may be
and no reference to the latter should be made on the schedule.
In this connection it may be added that
while, generally speaking, it is an enumerator's duty
to make further inquiries in respect of any answer on the schedule which he has
good reason to believe to be erroneous, the Registrar may accept a statement of
the relationship of parents and children which, though in doubtful concordance with
their legal status, is not inconsistent with the other information returned on
the schedule.
So,
whether by accident or design, my grandfather did fill that in that box correctly.
However, he didn’t get everything right – not only did he omit the column (e) entry
for my grandmother's sister Clara, he got several of
the ages wrong by a month. My grandmother was born on 22/10/1893, so at the time
of the census she was just under 8 months past her 27th birthday, but her
stepdaughter had been born on 11/11/1906, so was 14 years and 7 months old on
Census Day. Similarly Charlotte's birthday was on 3rd
January, so she was also a month older than shown, whereas Clara was a month
younger.
I
suppose it's easier to be out by a month when you're doing these calculations
in your head – but much more difficult to understand is how he came to be 4
months out on his own age. It was such a large discrepancy that I went to my
paper files and dug out his birth certificate, to make certain that I hadn't
recorded his age incorrectly – however it definitely states
that he was born on 24/11/1882, making him 38 years and less than 7 months old
on 19th June 1921, not 10 months as shown in the census schedule. His birth was
registered on 1st January 1883, just a few days within the 6
week limit, so was it possible that his mother had changed the date to avoid
a penalty? Probably not - both my grandfather's baptism register entry and his
1939 Register entry give the same birthdate, so I'll just have to assume that his
arithmetic let him down in 1921.
When
census staff reviewed the household schedules, filling gaps and correcting what
they saw as obvious mistakes, they didn't always get it right. For example,
Dawn wrote with this example from her own tree – I'll let her tell you about it
in her own words:
"The household
is headed by a widower, Ernest Lancaster, followed by a married 'boarder',
Ellen Martha Wigg, and her two teenaged children,
surnamed Wigg, then two much younger children,
surnamed Lancaster. These two are shown as having two parents living - as they
do, since they are the children of the 'boarder' and Ernest Lancaster (confirmed
by birth certificate). However, a clerk has 'corrected' this, to show them as
having only one parent living, presumably based on Ernest status as a widower –
thus giving rise to erroneous statistics, and possible confusion.
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by
courtesy of The National Archives and with the kind permission of Findmypast
"To
fill in the back story, Ellen Martha, née Hood, was first married to James Wigg, a fisherman who died in 1903. She then married Frank
Grieve (1906) and was still married to him in 1921. During the war, he had been
on the naval patrol boats (converted from local fishing boats) in Lowestoft. They
had three surviving children (born in 1906, 1908, 1910). She 'took up with' Ernest
Lancaster, so Grieve had her Navy allowance stopped, she handed him the
children, and the Mission to Seamen helped him place them with Barnardo's. Thus Ellen was indeed a married woman at the time of the
census, but her husband's name wasn't Wigg. She and
Ernest Lancaster moved to London and then married in 1953, not long after Grieve's death.
"This
story took some years to disentangle, with assistance from one of Grieve's descendants - an unexpected kindness, perhaps,
given that my interest is in Lancaster. But in family history I have often been
grateful for the kindness of strangers."
Dawn
subsequently shared with me the birth certificate for Ernest Edward Wigg – note that both the father and mother attended the
register office – otherwise the father's name couldn't have been recorded in
the register.
Normally
when a child is born to a married woman, under Common Law her husband is presumed
to be the father – I'm not sure what evidence, if any, the registrar would have
required in order to record Ernest Lancaster as the
father.
One
piece of information shown on the 1921 household schedules that isn't filled in
my head of household is the number of 'living rooms'. When a LostCousins asked
me recently which rooms were excluded I hazarded that
bathrooms and kitchens weren't included, but it turns out I was only
half right.
Having
since read the Instructions to Enumerators which can be found in the fifth download file of RG27/9
(starting at image 37), I now know
that whilst bathrooms and sculleries are excluded, kitchens are included in the
definition. This surely means that the 4 rooms occupied by my grandfather and
his family (see above) would have provided pretty cramped
accommodation, especially as my great aunt was still living there when she married
10 months later.
Just 10 days to win ENDS 31ST
JANUARY
Dozens
of members have already won prizes in this year's competition, but there are
still hundreds of prizes to be won. To win a prize requires no expertise, other
than the research skills that all serious family historians acquire by indulging
in their favourite hobby!
One
lucky member is going to win up to £175 in cash to pay for the images they've
viewed from the 1921 Census after clicking my link – see the article at the
start of this newsletter. But there are lots of other prizes, most of them experiences
that money cannot buy….
SPECIAL PRIZE: Baroness Scott interview followed by Q&A
session (11am 3rd February 2022)
Baroness
Ros Scott was the prime driver behind the legislation that allows the General Register Office to provide 'certificates' in an
electronic format – I first reported her proposals on
Christmas Day 2014, and what a Christmas present for family historians it
turned out to be!
The
2015 Deregulation Act subsequently imposed a duty on the GRO to come forward
with proposals relating to historic certificates, and in late 2016 we were all
taking part in the PDF trial, which eventually became a permanent service.
I
will be talking to Baroness Scott in front of a small virtual audience about
her interest in family history and how that has fed into her work in the House
of Lords – I suspect I'll be asking whether she hopes that one day there will
be instant access to the historic registers for England & Wales, as there
already is in Scotland. Following the interview there will be an opportunity for
members of the audience to ask questions.
To
maximise your chance of winning this valuable opportunity add as many relatives
as possible to your My Ancestors page during the period of the competition, and indicate your interest on the My Prizes
page at the LostCousins site.
STAR
PRIZE: 12 month Diamond subscription to The
Genealogist (normal price £139.95)
You
could win unlimited access to a wide range of records including non-conformist
records, exclusive tithe records and tithe maps, and a growing collection of
'Lloyd George' Domesday records and maps which you won't find at any other
site. If you already have a Diamond subscription an additional 12 months will
be added.
The
prize winner will be chosen after the competition closes on 31st January 2022,
but if you can't wait you can get a 4 month Diamond subscription for just
£44.95 when you follow this link
(you'll also get a free 12 month subscription to Discover Your Ancestors
online magazine worth £24.99).
STAR
PRIZE: 12 month unlimited subscription to British
Newspaper Archive (normal price £79.95)
Over
46 million pages from historic British and Irish newspapers, with hundreds of
thousands more pages added every month. Upwards of half a billion articles,
notices, and adverts, and literally billions of names. Was your ancestor famous
for 15 minutes?
Optimised
search features include the ability to search for articles added after a
particular date, so that you don't have to repeatedly trawl through articles
you've previously read or discarded. The prize winner will be chosen after the
competition closes on 31st January 2022.
SPECIAL PRIZE:
Scottish Research Resources Before 1800 with Chris Paton (10am 25th January)
Do
you have Scottish ancestors? In this talk Chris Paton, author and professional
genealogist will Zoom you to pre-19th century Scotland, when things begin to
get a little more complicated with your ancestral research. From Kirk to state,
a variety of records are available but it's one thing to find them, and quite
another to understand them, with different handwriting styles, language
problems and the feudal nature of Scottish society forming some of the many
challenges that make earlier Scottish research fun but challenging.
Chris
will explore the various record types available, and how to access them both
online and offline. This exclusive Zoom presentation in front of a select
audience will be followed by a question and answer
session in which all are invited to participate. To maximise your chances of
being one of the lucky few to attend, add as many relatives as possible to your
My Ancestors page and complete your My Prizes page so that I know
which prizes you'd most like to win.
Note:
You'll find my reviews of two of Chris's most recent books here and here.
STAR
PRIZE: One-to-one brick wall busting session with the editor of Who Do You
Think You Are? magazine
Most of you will know
Sarah Williams as the editor of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine – but
she is also a highly competent genealogist with a Masters degree in Medieval Studies. I'm delighted to
say that Sarah has generously offered to help knock down an English 'brick
wall' for the lucky winner of this prize.
This
one-to-one consultation will take place over Zoom on a mutually convenient
date, and whilst there's no guarantee that Sarah will be able to solve your
problem during the session, I'd be surprised if her insight into your 'brick
wall' doesn’t lead you in a new and more productive direction.
Tip:
only one lucky member can win this prize or the one below but everyone can
benefit from the advice in my Masterclass 'Knocking down brick walls' which was
recently updated and can be found here. (Note: that there
are links to ALL of my Masterclasses on the
Subscribers Only page.)
SPECIAL
PRIZE: Seminar on marriage law with Professor Rebecca Probert (date to be
confirmed)
Many of you will
already be familiar with Professor Probert's books for genealogists (you'll
find my reviews here and here), but even if you
haven't read the books you'll know, I'm sure, that she is the leading authority
on historical marriage law in England & Wales. Her books have over-turned numerous
myths about the ways our ancestors married, shedding new light on their
behaviour and the sometimes difficult decisions they
were faced with.
Currently
Professor of Law at Exeter University, in 2015 she was seconded to the Law Commission
to work on their scoping paper Getting Married and since August
2019 she has been acting as specialist advisor to the Commission on their Weddings Project.
This
exclusive Zoom presentation in front of a small invited
audience will be followed by a question and answer session in which all are
invited to participate. To maximise your chances of being one of the lucky few
to attend add as many relatives as possible to your My Ancestors page.
SPECIAL
PRIZE: Nathan Dylan Goodwin interview followed by Q&A session (date to be
confirmed)
I'll be interviewing
Nathan Dylan Goodwin, the creator of the Forensic Genealogist series featuring
Morton Farrier, live on Zoom – and you could be in the audience! Amongst other
things I'll be asking questions about the characters in the books, and where
the inspiration for them came from.
After
the interview I'll be inviting questions from the floor – note that the number
of attendees will be kept low so that as many people as possible have the
chance to ask their question. However you can also
submit questions on the My Prizes page – that way your question could
get asked even if you’re not fortunate enough to be invited.
To
maximise your chances of being one of the lucky few to attend, add as many relatives
as possible to your My Ancestors page – and don't leave it to the last
minute, because this is an opportunity that no fan of Morton Farrier will want
to miss!
Note: you'll find my review of Nathan's latest book here.
SPECIAL
PRIZE: Secrets of the census with Dr Donald Davis (date to be confirmed)
Speaking to us from Canada will be Dr Donald Davis, who retired from a vocation studying the health of populations to an
avocation exploring population records – he is currently looking forward to the
release of the 1921 England & Wales Census which, taken following the Great
War, explored new avenues of importance to family historians.
When the previous census (1911) was released we saw for the first time the forms that our
ancestors had filled in, replete with misunderstandings, spelling mistakes,
amendments, and gratuitous comments. This was eye-opening – all that had
survived from the 1841-1901 censuses were the enumerators' summary books. Or so
it was thought – then Don discovered a cache of household schedules from the
1841 Census at Shropshire Archives and many of our assumptions about the census
were overturned.
INVITED PRESENTATION: 'Brits to Canada', with John D Reid (date to
be arranged)
From the first part
of the 19th century, to late in the 20th, many British people from all walks of
life chose to cross the Atlantic for opportunities in Canada. Are they missing
from your family history? Explore the resources available to you to throw light
on your Canadian cousins and some remarkable personalities and stories.
Born
in Norfolk, now a long-time resident of Ottawa, John D Reid is a retired
environmental research scientist. Since 2006, he has presented an independent
view of British and Canadian family history resources and developments, seen
from an Ottawa perspective in his Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections blog.
Those
of you who were fortunate to be amongst the attendees at one of the Genealogy
in the Sunshine events I organised in Portugal some years ago will, I'm sure,
remember John D Reid as well as Chris Paton and Dr Donald Davis, all of whom were
amongst the distinguished speakers – as was Professor Probert in the second
year.
INVITED PRESENTATION: 'Lost
an ancestor? There were 3 million Britons in India', with Elaine MacGregor
(date to be arranged)
Did members of your family
travel to India; could some of your relatives have been born there?
Elaine started researching her family history
in her teens and used her grandmother’s dog breeding pedigree forms to fill in
a basic family tree! Then life
intervened and it was only about 30 years ago that she started researching her
family in earnest when her husband bought her a family history software package
for Christmas. She knew that her father and grandmother were born in Calcutta,
but it was not until she joined FIBIS (Families in British India Society) over
20 years ago that she discovered through research that she has 6 generations in
India.
Elaine
will be speaking over Zoom to a small invited audience,
and there will be time for Q&A at the end. Please indicate your interest on
the My Prizes page at the LostCousins site; the date and time of the
presentation will be announced closer to the time – in the meantime you can maximise
your chance of being one of the fortunate few by adding as many relatives as possible
to your My Ancestors page.
Remember,
the competition ends on 31st January, and to have a chance of winning one or
more prizes you need only enter relatives – from any of the 9 censuses we
use – on your My Ancestors page.
Note:
only relatives who are genetically-related to the
member concerned will count, however if you are researching on behalf of
someone else (eg a spouse) entries you make on their
account will also qualify; relatives from the 1881 censuses count double.
If you want to win a prize, you have to
tell me!
When
I announced this year's bigger and better competition on 10th December I wrote:
"Also new this year is the My Prizes
page at the LostCousins website, which lists the prizes on offer and allows you
to express your preferences – this doesn’t guarantee that you'll get the prize
that you want, but it does mean that you won’t be offered a prize that you
don't want (because you will only be considered for prizes that you have
rated)."
So
when at the beginning of the month I had to pick a winner for the one of this
year's top prizes, a one-to-one brick wall-busting session with one of the stars
of the genealogy world, Dr Janet Tew, I was surprised to discover that only half
of the entrants had followed the advice – it wasn't that they hadn’t expressed
an interest in that particular prize, they hadn't expressed an interest in any
of the prizes on offer.
If
you are taking part in the competition – and why wouldn't you – do please complete your My Prizes page as soon as
possible!
Yes
- I know it’s a stupid question! All genealogists have 'brick walls', and the only
thing that some might find slightly surprising is that the more experienced a
genealogist is, the more 'brick walls' they have.
Over
the years I've noticed that there's a tendency to focus on one 'brick wall' at
a time, which is in many ways a good thing – let's face it, if I was trying to
knock down all of the my 100+ 'brick walls' at the
same time I'd be lucky to make any progress at all. On the other hand, focusing
on a single 'brick wall' to the exclusion of everything else is a poor
strategy: some 'brick walls' will never be knocked down, some will be knocked
down only when new records become available online, and there will be some that
– because of deficiencies in the records – will only ever be solved using DNA
matches, and even then may depend on future matches, rather than the matches
that you (and the cousins you are collaborating with) already have.
Two
of the top prizes in this year's competition were 'brick wall' busting
sessions, one with Sarah Williams – the editor of Who Do You Think You Are?
magazine – which is still to be awarded, and one with Dr Janet Few, which has
already been awarded. I've written a Masterclass in knocking down 'brick walls'
yourself (you'll find it here),
and some of my other Masterclasses are also highly relevant, but there's an article
on Dr Few's blog which everyone should read
before asking others for help.
Viewing the 1921 Census in Manchester
In
the last issue I reported
Gay's experience viewing the 1921 Census at the National Archives in Kew; this
time I'd like to share with you the story of Val's trip to Manchester Central
Library:
"I emailed the library to ask about
viewing the census and they sent a standard reply with all the info necessary,
including a phone number to book a computer. The census is available via the
Findmypast site on all their library computers (they have about 130 on
different floors), so all you need is a login. If you are not a member of the
library, then membership of other libraries in the Greater Manchester area or
adjoining authorities might be accepted, but otherwise you can apply for a card
via the online registration process at home or on a screen in the library before
completing the process at the lower ground floor library information desk. You
need a letter or something else recent with your name and address on as proof
of address (you don't have to live in Manchester), and something with your
photo and name on to confirm you are who you say you are.
"I encountered a glitch with the online
process at home, as the system thought it recognised me and wouldn't take the
next step, so I phoned the library and was told they couldn't find me on their
database, so to go to the desk on the day for them to sign me up. Which I
did. I arrived 30mins early in case of queues, and they let me start on
the computer straight away, even though my booking hadn't started.
Probably because they had no record of my booking anyway!
"I had booked a computer slot while on
the phone and had a choice of times, so I picked a mid-week mid-morning
slot. If over 60 you have two hours, and can ask
for this to be extended if others are not waiting to use the computers (if you only
qualify for one hour, you can do the same). However, when I arrived they had no record of my computer booking. I heard
others arriving and asking about their booking, and again there was no
record. Fortunately there were plenty of
computers free.
"The two-hour slot was automatic as the
registration includes your date of birth. Unlike my own local library,
where warning messages scroll across 20 minutes before time expires, the first
message appeared at the 5 minute mark. This
doesn't give much time to close down any personal info
such as email (I was emailing each set of docs to myself as I went along),
collect up valuables and personal items, and queue at the desk to ask for an
extension. Next time I'll set a timer to remind me to ask when there's
still 10 minutes to go. Fortunately I was close to the
desk and the queue was short but think there were only seconds left by the time
I was seen. I left my coat on my chair and the screen open on FMP
mid-search ready to resume and to show the space was in use, but it wouldn't
have taken long to login and start again at the same computer or a different
one.
"Regarding COVID, I picked my time so I
could use an off-peak train, and it turned out that it had very few passengers
there and back. I was quite shocked on arriving at how quiet the city
was, with many shops and food places closed because so many were working from
home. This meant demand for library computers was also low. I used a
computer on the lower ground floor but there are others elsewhere. One
table had plastic screens to separate users from each other, but not on the
table I used. As I had COVID over Christmas (like so many others) I did
feel safer from catching it or spreading it in any case, and that, along with
the working from home situation, also influenced my decision to visit the
library sooner rather than later. I was planning to use the library café, but
that area was very cold, being on the ground floor near the entrance doors, so
not a place to linger long. Despite many cafés being closed there were
still plenty to choose from that were warmer."
To
make the best use of her time at the library Val did some searching at home, and created a list of households to look up. In 3 hours she managed to look up 30 households, which would have
cost her £105 if she had done it from home, so she considered it a very worthwhile
trip. However, she did add this comment:
"Now I know the library layout, I will
book one of the computers surrounded by screens next time. I was surrounded
by computer users without masks coughing and spluttering all over the place, so
was not too impressed by that! Luckily have had my flu jab too. I
felt sorry for the library staff having to deal with so many maskless and thoughtless people."
I
don't recommend that anyone risks catching COVID just to save money on the
census, but if you’re going to do it anyway, learning from the experiences of
Val and Gay should make it a more pleasurable, more productive, and safer
experience.
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Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2022 Peter Calver
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