A million log on to English life 100 years ago

THE Queen Mother is there, so are Charlie Chaplin, JRR Tolkien and Claude Monet. So are more than 32million of their fellow Edwardians, whose details are published on the internet today as the 1901 census goes online.

The census, the first to go on the internet after the standard 100- year moratorium, will allow amateur historians to trace their family roots.

It lists the names, ages, addresses and mental health of the population, painstakingly digitised from more than 1.5million pages detailing residents of England and Wales.

It was published at 9am today by the Public Record Office, which doubled its number of servers to cope with the interest. Despite this, the system virtually came to a halt as more than a million users tried to log on during the first three hours.

A PRO spokeswoman said: "The system is overloading and we ask people to be patient. All we can suggest is to keep trying."

Project manager Alison Webster said: "The census returns are our most popular documents and making them available on the internet means anyone can access information on their ancestors, the history of their house and their local area, as well as gaining an insight into the social and economic conditions of the time."

Among the names listed is that of eight-month-old Elizabeth Angela Bowes- yon (later to become the Queen Mother), whose address is given as Walden, Herts. A spelling mistake or poor handwriting appears to be responsible for adding a rogue "i" to her middle name, making it Angelia.

Charles Chaplin is listed as a "music hall artiste". Other famous names to appear include the author HG Wells and Florence Nightingale.

The census asked respondents for their names, addresses, ages and occupations and required them to list the state of their mental health, reporting whether they were deaf and dumb, blind, lunatic, an imbecile or feebleminded.

Statistics from the census show the population of England and Wales was 32,527,843, compared with 52.7 million in 1999. The density of population was 558 per square mile, compared with 152 per square mile in 1801 and about 900 per square mile in 1999.

Users logging on to the site on www.pro.gov.uk can search under several categories, including name, place and address, and look at a digital image of the census return for 75p.

For 50p they can look at the transcribed details from the census return.

Another 50p buys the details of all other people listed at an address.

Copyright 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.