Forget the census.....

Someone else may have posted about this elsewhere so i apologise if so....

I know Peter has talked about this already but i thought the Daily Mail article entitled 'Forget the census, they could just Google us all' was very interesting. Some of the comments are rather weird though.

I dont know what to say, really, except what has already been said. Personally and from a family history point of view i find censuses a great source of interest, even if it is simply to see the handwriting of an ancestor in the 1911 one!

 

I know from my One Name Study that there are more than a dozen persons of my name born in the 1960s as well as a smaller number, like me, from the 1950s. Given the difficulty banks have with people of the same name, and given the Governments' incompetence with IT, I do hope the Mail is wrong (again?!).

It seems a shame to me to ditch censuses completely - there must be other ways to reduce costs - eg. is it necessary to have it in 14 different languages, and so long? But with all these co-habitations, multiple fathers and same-sex marriages, what genealogy will be like in 100 years time, goodness knows! Sounds a good thread subject...

As Carla says, the 1911 has been fascinating for the handwriting and the mortality data.

 

Also for the 'room count' - it is interesting to see how many rooms our ancestors lived in

 

I personally find the census records so interesting, in fact, essential to any genealogist interested in the social history and family movement and interactivity.
It's not just about names and numbers for us (although that is what the census is all about)