Newsletter – 14th March
2021
Judge orders last minute change to 2021 Census
Will there be an extra census in 2026?
Incompetence, or just thoughtlessness?
When is a relative not a relative? On census day!
Save on Who Do You Think You Are? magazine
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Judge orders last minute change to 2021 Census
A High Court judge has ordered the Office for
National Statistics to change the guidance on the England & Wales census
forms, even though the census is due to take place next Sunday, 21st March. You
can read more about the decision in this BBC News article.
Although
the judge only made an interim order, he was satisfied that a full judicial
review would find in favour of the complainants – this is expected to take
place before Census Day.
Will there be an extra census in 2026?
A
Oxford University professor has called
for the government to prepare for an additional census in 2026, because next
week's census is "a
snapshot of a strange unrepresentative time" because of the pandemic.
Regular
readers will recall that a month ago I argued
for additional questions to be included so that the census would capture more
information about the once in a century pandemic. Perhaps the government should
bite the bullet and take up both suggestions?
Incompetence, or just thoughtlessness?
The
2021 Census was always going to be controversial, not least because many people
in government and in the Office for National Statistics wanted it to be the
last – for much of the past decade they've been planning to abolish the
household census altogether and replace it with a motley collection of so-called
'administrative data' extracted from a wide range of sources including
supermarket loyalty cards!
Family
historians campaigned for the 2021 Census to collect key items of data that
would help the family historians of the future to trace their ancestors,
including birthplaces rather than merely birth countries – information that had
not been collected on a census since 1951! We all know how frustrating the
limitations of the 1841 Census are for the current generation of genealogists –
the 2021 Census might well be last opportunity to capture key data for the benefit
of our 22nd century successors.
On
Friday 13th December 2013 - the last day of the consultation - I was in the
midst of a severe bout of dengue fever which led to me being hospitalised a few
days later, but I nevertheless rose from my sick bed to submit my suggestions.
But even though there were more responses from family historians than all other
groups our proposals were pooh-poohed, and that's putting it politely.
Whilst
Scotland and the Republic of Ireland have decided to postpone their census
until 2022, when the pandemic will hopefully have been contained, the Office
for National Statistics elected to plough ahead. However, instead of modifying
the census to capture key information about the impact of the pandemic, they
chose to ignore the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Are
they incompetent, uncaring, or just blinkered?
When is a relative not a relative? On census day!
In
the 2021 England & Wales census there's a separate section for visitors –
but there's no way to show what the relationship is between them, or whether
they're related to the head of household (or any of the members of the
household).
But
this isn’t new - almost exactly 170 years ago my great-great-great-great grandmother
Sarah Beamont (née Harding) was shown in the 1851 Census as a visitor in the
household of her son William:
©
Crown Copyright Images courtesy of The National Archives, London, England.
Reproduced with the permission of Findmypast
But
for the surname there's little to differentiate Sarah from the other visitor who
was staying on census night – who to the best of my knowledge isn't a family
member.
Another
son, Joseph, was living with his family just two doors away in the same street;
perhaps that's where Sarah normally lived? Confusingly, whilst Joseph and William
were both baptised in St Albans, Hertfordshire, the St Alban's Court where they
were all living was in the City of London – it’s now just a tunnelled alley
beneath a modern office building (there's a photo here).
Researchers
have calculated that more twins are being born than ever before – worldwide it
has gone from 9 per 1000 deliveries to 12, which means that 1 child in 42 is a
twin.
You
can read more about the research in this BBC News article.
This
article isn't about the Office for National Statistics, though some would argue
that the title would be appropriate – instead I wanted to address the issue of
the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine causing blood clots. As many of you will know,
several European countries (including Ireland, Iceland, Norway, and Denmark)
have stopped administering this vaccine following reports that a small number
of people had been affected by serious blood clots in Norway.
When
this news first came out I carried out a quick search to find out how common
blood clots are. I discovered that in the US there are around 900,000 events
per year, and that about 100,000 people die as a result – a colossal death toll
for something that is, in theory, preventable.
If
one person in 370 in the US has a blood clot in the course of a year, you don’t
need to be a maths wizard to figure out that if you vaccinate tens of millions
of people, some of them are bound to have blood clotting incidents in the days
and weeks after their vaccination – purely by chance. It's sad when someone dies,
whatever the cause – but the need to always blame something or someone for an
untoward event can be unhealthy.
The term spinster
isn't very appealing, so it's perhaps not surprising that the term
'bachelorette' came into use in the US – though I can't imagine anyone using
that term in the UK. In 2005 the Registrar for England & Wales decided that
in future the term 'single' should replace 'bachelor' and 'spinster' in wedding
registers.
Back
in the early years of the 20th century the term 'bachelor girl' was used in
England – so much more stylish than 'bachelorette' or 'spinster'. I've reproduced
part of a 1911 article from the Pall Mall Gazette which I found in the
British Newspaper Archive.
(Image © The British Library Board. All Rights
Reserved. Used by permission of Findmypast).
But
in the early 1960s the talk – or rather, the singing – was not of bachelor
girls, but bachelor boys.
Do
you remember Cliff Richard's Bachelor Boy, one of the more memorable
songs from the film Summer Holiday? The last two lines of the song were
"Happy to be a bachelor boy, Until my dying day" – and since Cliff Richard
has never married it looks as if it’s coming true….
Although
the motives that originally triggered our interest in family history vary,
there are few family historians who wouldn't want to be able to take their tree
back another generation or two. Indeed, for most of us getting back as far as
we can is a key goal – so why waste time and effort researching the branches of
our tree?
My
objective has always been to get back as far as I can, but every time I knocked
down a 'brick wall' there were at least two more behind it! And with every
generation the number of ancestral lines doubled – frankly, it’s no wonder that
I soon realised that I wouldn't be able to do it all on my own.
Similarly,
getting back to a 12x great grandfather in the 1500s seemed like quite an achievement
– until I did the sums and realised that there were 16,383 other 12 x great
grandparents that I hadn't identified. Collaborating with cousins isn't
an admission of defeat, it's about being realistic about what we can achieve on
our own.
Of
course, if you're also using DNA to help you overcome your 'brick walls' then
connecting with your documented cousins is even more important (see my updated DNA
Masterclass for more details).
But
the important thing to remember is that you’re not looking for cousins so that you
can add them to your Christmas card list (though it's a probably a good idea if
you do), you’re looking for cousins so that you can collaborate with them. Sometimes
collaboration will mean working together on a specific line, but more often
it'll mean one of you taking primary responsibility for certain of the lines
that you share.
All
of us have experience of finding living cousins, only to discover that they've
got no interest in their family tree -
so it's good to know that that the only cousins you'll find through
LostCousins are the ones who are interested in family history.
Of
course, ALL of your living cousins are descended from the branches of your tree
– and that's why you sometimes have to go sideways in order to get back!
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Be
sure to follow the advice in my DNA Masterclass, which was extensively updated
in the last issue – otherwise you'll be wasting your time as well as your money!
And remember that you don't have to wait for your DNA results to come through –
there is plenty for you to do whilst you’re waiting.
Here
in England today is Mother's Day. For me it's a particularly poignant day,
because it would also have been my own mother's 95th birthday; sadly she was
taken from us by cancer in 1976. This must have been particularly traumatic for
my father who had lost his own mother to cancer, and his only sibling to TB.
Mum
would have been amazed that I've become so involved in family history – I never
showed much interest in family when I was younger. She'd also have been dumbfounded
by what I've discovered: nobody knew that we had German ancestors, whilst the
fact that her grandfather married his deceased wife's sister at a time when it
was illegal was never talked about, so I doubt she ever knew.
Genealogy
was once restricted to the rich and famous, but now we can all research our
ancestors, many of whom will have been buried in unmarked graves and forgotten
once those who knew them were no longer around. We can’t bring them back to
life, but we can honour them by documenting their lives and ensuring that they
are never again forgotten!
This is where any major updates and corrections will be
highlighted - if you think you've spotted an error first reload the newsletter
(press Ctrl-F5) then
check again before writing to me, in case someone else has beaten you to
it......
That's all for now, but I'll be back very soon – with my tips on
how to keep a copy of the census when you complete it online.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2021 Peter Calver
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