Problem verifying my 1881 england wales census entry

An alphabetic suffix, usually A, indicates that the person numbering the sheets at the Public Record Office made an error - they are rare occurrences (about 1 in 1000). Ignoring the suffixes enabled the folio number to be designated as a numeric field, rather than as an alphanumeric field, and this prevented inadvertent errors being made during input.

The reference checking feature was added a decade later by which point in excess of a million entries had been input - it was not feasible to retrospectively alter the procedure. Entering the suffix manually is the only solution, and whilst it takes a few seconds longer, it's such a rare occurence that most members are never affected.

The LDS transcription at ScotlandsPeople is the recommended source for this census (see the Census Links page for recommended sites). Note that the Add Ancestor form also includes the advice 'If you have trouble finding any of the references see this FAQ'.

 

There is good news for members who are keen to ensure that their entries match the 1881 England & Wales Census - when you click the name of a relative from that census the Edit ancestor page now has three new buttons:



Clicking any of these buttons will carry out a census search using the census references so that you can check your entry against the census transcripts (which, for 1881, are free at both Findmypast and Ancestry). Only Ancestry has the original LDS transcription, so if there is a difference between the two sites the Ancestry version should be used. Unfortunately Ancestry don't allow census references to be used unless you search an individual country, hence the two separate buttons (to keep the page reasonably simple the Isle of Man and Channel Islands don't have their own buttons, so if you need to search at Ancestry you'll need to do it manually).

I hope you find this new feature helpful - it was inspired by a suggestion from Bryman, and should prove particularly useful if you have a 'near match' (indicated by a red exclamation mark). The buttons do not appear if your entry matches that of another member.

 

If this feature proves useful I will expand it to cover some of the other censuses, though there will only be one button for most censuses (eg Ancestry haven't transcribed the schedule numbers for the 1911 census, and half of their folio numbers are wrong for the 1841 census).