1911 census goes online

By Tim Castle

LONDON (Reuters) - Census details of the 36 million people living in England and Wales in 1911 go online for the first time on Tuesday, three years earlier than planned after a freedom of information ruling.

The records provide a snapshot of life shortly before a generation of young men perished in World War One.

The task of scanning 8.5 million dusty and brittle documents at Britain's National Archives in Kew, west London, has taken two years and is still not complete.

A search for the Liberal prime minister of the period, Herbert Asquith, reveals there were 25 people at his 10 Downing Street residence in London on the day of the survey, Sunday April 2, 1911.

As well as Asquith, his second wife Margot and four of his children, there were 19 servants on the premises, including three footmen, a butler, a governess and three kitchen maids.

The scanning has been undertaken by family history website findmypast.com, who won a contract with the National Archives in 2006 to put the records onto the Internet.

The 1911 census is the first in which the original forms filled in by households have survived.

Details from the forms have been entered into a searchable database and colour photos of the original documents can also be downloaded from the census website, www.1911census.co.uk.