Inquisitive millions clog online census

The first British census to go online, showing the family details of 32 million people living in England and Wales in 1901, ground to a halt within minutes of its launch as millions of people around the world tried simultaneously to trace their ancestry.

The website was almost unreachable throughout the day because of the strength of demand, much of it from Americans keen to trace ancestors who had emigrated across the Atlantic.

The forebears of many New Zealanders are listed on the census.

The Public Record Office, which released the census, had expected a huge demand when it was published on Thursday.

More than a million users tried to log on during its first three hours. The site, equipped to deal with up to 14 hits a second without crashing, received 10 times that number.

Undaunted, a spokeswoman for the Public Record Office (PRO), where more than 1.5 million pages of records were scanned over two years to produce the website, insisted this was "a success story, not a problem - because it shows that people want to get on to the site".

"They have been waiting 10 years, or 100 years if you like - it's 10 years since the last census, for 1891, was released on microfiche and microfilm, but by standard practice all the records for the 1901 census have been sealed from public scrutiny for 100 years."

The demand reflects the popularity of online genealogy.

Though the PRO had doubled the number of servers available, it was still overwhelmed.

"We think that if people give it a few days, the demand will settle down," the spokeswoman said.

The online version opens the door to a divided country in which the records of "imbeciles, lunatics and feeble-minded" sit alongside entries for the Queen Mother, then the 8-month-old Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, and a "musical hall artiste" better known as Charlie Chaplin.

The census includes the names, ages and addresses of everyone living in England and Wales on March 31, 1901, during the reign of Edward VII, who had just succeeded Queen Victoria.

It also asked for mental health details, and whether people were deaf and dumb, blind, lunatics, imbeciles or feeble-minded.

In all, 90,000 fell into the latter three categories, and the PRO warned people searching for details of their ancestors to be ready for a shock.

As well as the Queen Mother and Chaplin, the census includes the cricketer W.G. Grace (a "physician and secretary of the London County Cricket Club"), and other famous names such as the French artist Claude Monet, the authors H.G. Wells and J.R.R. Tolkien, and the nurse Florence Nightingale.

Downloading a census image costs 75p ($2.53); a further 50p buys the transcribed details from the census return, and 50p more the details of all other people listed at that address.

Revenue will go towards digitising other censuses.

The census shows that the population of England and Wales was 32.5 million, compared to 52.7 million in 1999. The density of population was 558 a square mile, compared with 152 a square mile in 1801 and about 900 a square mile in 1999.

Errors inevitably crop up. A rogue "i" is added to the Queen Mother's middle name, Angela, for example.

The site also offers "Vessel searc" - because 70,000 people were on vessels at the time.

The census can be searched by name, age, gender or address.

- INDEPENDENT

British census online