Transcripts of an address on the 1911 Census for Bottesford, Leicestershire

The images on this website are displayed as it is important for potential users of the census search service being offered by the National Archives to be able to judge for themselves the accuracy or otherwise of the information being supplied to them by the National Archives. The search fee though based on the standard National Archives fee for such services is, though justifiable, still a large fee to be found by many researchers it is therefore imperative that they are confident that the transcripts they receive in return are of the highest accuracy possible. These pages contain the first transcripts and images of the 1911 made available to a member of the public and are therefore the only yardstick available to judge whether the proposed service will result in accurate transcripts or whether the general public is going to be disappointed at the quality of the transcripts. In my view the National Archives have produced badly flawed and poorly transcribed results that are not up to the professional standard expected of such an establishment.

Take a look at the transcripts below and the relevant images, compare the written return on the schedule with the National Archives attempted transcription.

Are they accurate transcriptions?

If a professional researcher supplied you with a transcription such as those displayed would you feel that they had delivered a professional result or would you feel they could have done better?

The first item that comes to mind, bearing in mind the Information Commissioner’s decision, is they have not complied 100% with the decision.

The decision stated that the National Archive must furnish all the information requested and took pains to point out that there was no sensitive information on the schedule. By redacting the schedule it is my opinion that the National Archives have left me in the position of imagining there may be further information on the schedule. It is my contention they should have supplied the schedule in full as required by the decision. This also means they should have supplied the information from the other side of the image as that too contains information with regards the property i.e. the address.


Original Schedules held at the National Archives, Kew.
 
RG14 19650/86                                                                           Number 12 High Street, Bottesford
Note the above reference and address were not included in the national Archive transcripts.

Click here for high resolution image

In the above example the National Archives have failed to record the address and reference of the transcript this is the type of error expected of a naive researcher not the county’s national archive.

They have also failed to record the crossed out entries in the particulars of marriage column this information can sometimes be of importance to a family historian as it may provide a clue to the existence of children of the husband or of a previous marriage. It should be further noted that they have also failed to transcribe the total number of persons appearing on the schedule, the number of rooms in the house and the name and address of the person signing the schedule.

The transcripts also omit the statistician’s codes.

A transcript should provide an accurate copy of the information and not ignore information the transcriber thinks unimportant.
In this example no transcription errors have been made in the individual columns

RG14 19649/65                                                                              Number 12 High Street, Bottesford

Click here for high resolution image

In the above example the National Archives have again failed to record the address and reference of the transcript. It should be further noted that as in the first example they have also failed to transcribe the total number of persons appearing on the schedule, the number of rooms in the house and the name and address of the person signing the schedule.

This transcript also omits the statistician’s codes.

Unfortunately the accuracy of the data transcribed from the various columns of this schedule is not as accurate as in the first example.
The first possible error being in the third forename name of the head of the house, this is understandable as the writing is not clear and it is one of those judgement calls that plague any transcription. Proceeding across the columns we come across an example of bad practice in the form of use of abbreviations, in this case the use of the letters M & S to denote Married or Single as the case may be. Transcribers should never use abbreviations nor should they try to expand words abbreviated in the original text (though that does not occur in these examples). In this example again the transcriber has omitted a figure crossed out on the original, in this case the indication of the head of house being married 5 years, perhaps not important but does reflect on the accuracy of the transcription. In the *occupation* column the transcript has changed the spelling of the original from practitioner to practioner.

It is interesting to note that on the original schedule the wife is first given an age that appears to be 43 this is scored out and the age 32 added. Was this an error or was this an attempt to show the wife as younger than her husband, whichever is the case the transcriber again ignores the scored out entry. This could make a difference between finding and not finding the birth certificate of this person and is therefore another example of poor transcription practice.

With the exception of one surname the errors in these transcripts should not present too great a difficulty to the average researcher, but they do bring into question the professionalism of the staff of the National Archives.

It is hoped that when the search service actually begins the quality of transcription and the attention to detail will improve and that these errors occurred due to the nature of the request. However according to a National Archives source considerable time and effort was put in to making the above images legible. If that is the result of considerable time and effort I am afraid all researchers both now and in the future after the full census is released are going to be in for a disappointment. As a person who scans images for a living the above images are a quick scan with very little adjustment made. The contrast of the faded print portions could have been adjusted separately from the rest of the image to provide a higher quality result, it is obvious from the image that this has not been done.

I would like to think positively and hope the service when begun will provide an excellent service with accurate transcripts. Perhaps the fears of many researchers have of inaccurate transcripts based on the poor indexing of earlier census will be realised.
One thing is certain time will tell.

Update 17 January 2007

The National Archives have now launched their research service for the 1911 census details at – Research Service

The online form required to access this service for the 1911 census may be found at - Form

Remember the £45 fee is for the research work, even if this returns no results the search will have been carried out and the fee must be paid.

Please ensure you fully understand the terms and conditions of this service before completing your request.

Update 25 January 2007
The first requests for information using the national Archives online service have now been completed.

It is good to discover that rather than relying on transcripts the National Archives are supplying printouts of images of the householder’s schedule.

First reports show the service to be fast and efficient and the National Archives should be congratulated for supplying such a service at short notice.

Update 25 January 2009

The 1911 census was released online by Findmypast at 1911Census on the 13th January 2009 as an indirect result of my Freedom of Information appeal win.

The majority of English counties are online and the Welsh counties will follow later in the year.

See available counties for full details.

The 1911 Census site allows free searching and the option of paying to view either a transcript of the houshold schedule or a scanned image of the household schedule.
Unfortunately as is often the case with transcripts they may contain errors.

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Example Transcript from the 1911 census site.
Transcript (C)copyright brightsolid online publishing
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As may been seen the 1911 Census site provides a better transcript which includes the address and the schedule number missed off the National Archives transcript. Both would have been more accurately described as extracts rather than transcripts as neither fully transcribe the original.
Unfortunately they have made an error with the age (see note below schedule). Such errors may cause problems when searching a common name.

Original image of anHousehold Schedule as provided by the 1911 Census site.
Image Crown copyright RG14/19650 reproduced courtesy of The National Archives
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Note the above images have been reduced in size.

The quality of the scanned image provided by FindMyPast in my opinion far exceeds the quality of the monotone images provided by the National Archives as a result of the Freedom of Information request. The colour image allows the statistician's marks to be clearly seen allowing the researcher to differentiate between the householder's submission and later additions.
The above schedule also clearly shows why some errors occur in transcriptions where a judgement call has to be made as regards a name or in this case an age.

The 5 could be taken to be a 3.

Apart from a few niggles that will always be present when transcripts are involved. I feel the FindMyPast offering of the 1911 census to be one the best census resources yet to be offered on the internet.

I should add that now the 1911 census is being released it is no longer possible make a Freedom of Information request for information from the 1911 census.

This is because it is either available elsewhere or it is due to become available.

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