London census on CD

[Nortube]

Totally unrelated to trains (although they may show staff on duty at the time!)

If anybody is interested, S&N supplies have a special offer on the London Metropolitain area census CDs. These contain the same census page views that you would get if using a paid subscription to the various genealogy sites. Containing the census for every road, the sheets are in unprotected PDF format which don't need any fancy software to be accessed.

Available are 1851, 1861, 1871, 1891, 1901. All years are boxed CD sets, despite only 1891 being listed as CDs. The CDs can be easily copied to a PC hard drive for easier access rather than messing about keep swapping CDs. There is also a Lancashire set and a Yorkshire set at the special offer price. The box sets are £5 each, with £2.95 p&p added to the total order. I don't know how long the offer will last for.

I find the census fascinating reading because it gives an insight into that age and the jobs people did, etc.

genealogysupplies.com/bargain-basket/

[dave1]

Thanks for that as I am doing some family research they will come in very handy at that price.

[Nortube]

One thing to be aware of is that, unlike online sites, the CD census cannot be searched by name.  If looking for a specific person, you would need to know the road that they lived on, or perhaps the area. Some of the online sites that allow a basic free name search will often show the census registration district that that person is in. This will at least narrow it down a bit, but it will mean looking through all the records in that district unless a street name is known.

Each CD has a street index (titled with the area name) which lists streets covered by the area(s) (e.g. Paddington) on that CD in alphabetical order. The final CD in the set has a master Street index which lists the streets alphabetically by area (similar to that on the individual CDs. With the exception of the 1901 census, this is searchable using Acrobat Edit / Search. Searching here will pick up the street name(s) anywhere within that census. Note - apparently some smaller streets are not listed in the index.

Each CD also has an Index of the Sub District file numbers on that CD - e.g. RG12/4. Clicking on one of those will open up the start of the censuses for that district. For reference, there is a Master area index on the last CD. This is basically a collection of the index from all the CDs. showing what area and file number is on what CD, but is not clickable.

It took me a little while to work out how the indexing worked, but it was quite easy once I twigged it!

If you intend using the CDs regularly, especially if hopping from district to district, you may find it easier to copy the CDs to the hard drive if you have enough spare space. This makes access much simpler because you can just select the area you want direct from the PC rather than having to load the CD every time. I've copied over the 1901 census (45CDs) and that was approx. 25GB. However, as (presumably) that was when there were the most streets, earlier census CDs should be less (38 for 1891) with less storage capacity needed. I've not opened earlier bix sets yet, but I'm looking at a potential overall storage space of possibly just over 100GB.

Because the census are in PDF format, any census page can be easily printed out if required.

Although I am doing some family history type work, my use of the CDs would be more from a local history point of view, and there is certainly a lot of interesting things there.

[dave1]

Thanks for the heads up on what to do I can't wait for my CDs to arrive. You are right apart from family history there will be a lot of local history as well will keep me occupied for quite some time.