footie's blog

The Freedom of Information Act (2000) was supposed to make it easier to get information out of government, and lead to more openness - especially in those areas where there are outdated indefensible practises.

Well that is exactly the oppsite of what is happening with census records. I have just learnt that the 100-year closure for census records was only introduced in 1966 ! When the 1911 census was taken - no commitment was made to those completing it that the information would be kept secret, and in fact it should have been released in 1962, as the closure rule then in force was only 50 years. But the head of the Public Record Office at the time, refused to do so - delaying the release of the records until after the 100-year rule was introduced 4 years later.

However, the Freedom of Information Act abolished the 100-year closure rule applying to census records ... and the National Archives is still refusing to release them !!

This is being brought to a head in the UK Parliament by Early Day Motion 1198, proposed by Mike Hancock MP, which now has the support of over 130 MPs. The full text reads ...

On Friday, we went to see Sophie & Amy sing with their choir (Taplow Children's Choir) at the Royal Albert Hall. The concert was organized by CLIC Sargent, a charity supporting children with cancer. There were hundreds of children taking part, as well as a host of guests including Joss Stone, Lemar & Ms Dynamite.



A fun day was had by all the kids, even though it included travelling up at lunchtime and hanging around all afternoon. Our kids were in one of the top rows on the right hand side. Luckily we had brought binoculars so that we could see them ...

I spent this afternoon with an old friend, Pete Dyson, who now owns Studio West recording studios in San Diego. He was playing host to 30 school kids (and their teachers, parents and assorted hangers-on) who were making a charity record in aid of the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief fund. The whole event was the brainchild of music teacher, Joretta Harris, who had organized the whole event, written the song, laid down the backing tracks with some musician friends in Atlanta, and organized for with the 30 or so parents of the children for them to be there.

The amount of online resources for genealogists is expanding by the day.

Notable additions that have come to my attention recently include:

• 1861 Census - the searchable index to the 1861 census for England & Wales at 1837online.com is now complete.
• FamilyRelatives.org - a new site offering a complete index to all civil births, deaths & marriages 1866-1920.  They also have records beyond this date available - but not fully searchable.
  
• Together with an ever-increasing freeBMD, it is now possible to save enormous amounts of time that would otherwise have been spent lugging those weighty tomes around the Family Records Centre at Myddleton Place.
  

Great story on BBC News this week - The Comfort of Strangers - about members of an online genealogy forum, frustrated with trying to burst through their own brick walls, have taken to researching other peoples' family history - by selecting people at random from the 1881 census.

The forum in question - rootschat - also features an area for "censuswhacking" - identifying the only person or family with a given first name, surname or occupation in the census. Great examples include Fanny Minger, Silly Trollope and Loonie Cooper.

It's not often that two of my areas of interest converge - but I saw an article in the Guardian Science supplement last week, which intrigued me - "How do you decode the new Coldplay album cover?" by Marcus de Sautoy, a professor of mathematics at Oxford.

Not wanting to be a spoilsport or anything - but the answer is that it is a pictorial representation of the Baudot code for the characters X (10111), & (11011,00011), Y (10101).

If you ignore the colours - you should be able to see it clearly reading vertically. Things are getting a bit pretentious when it takes an Oxford professor to decode your album cover !

It is looking increasingly like June is becoming Chocolate month:-

• Our latest selection of luxurious chocolates from Hotel Chocolat arrived (one of Tina's birthday presents)
• The new Roald Dahl Museum has just opened in Great Missenden - with chocolate-coated doors.
• We visited Cadbury World (see separate article) - apparently Dahl's inspiration for Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (didn't see any Oompa Loompas there though).
  
• Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - the movie - is now complete, and the launch date has just been announced for ... er ... July.
  

Oh well the celebration of chocolate will have to continue past the end of June then.

Following my earlier comments, I have now had an official response from the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography team informing me that :

"According to the list I have Oxfordshire County Council and Reading Libraries have made purchases of the ODNB.

We appreciate that a number of individual readers would welcome either CD Rom or pay-as-you go service. We will be testing the water over the next few months and reviewing how to proceed and will take customers' feedback into account when doing so."

I received a mailshot today informing me that, after over a decade in the making, the New Dictionary of National Biography is due to be published on 23 September 2004. Without doubt, it is a major achievement, and will be a fantastic resource, but ...

... why make it so expensive & inaccessible ?