findmypast blog

The stigma of debt was one that was ingrained deep into the psyche of the Victorian people, and was a subject that popular writers such as Dickens and Gaskell returned to repeatedly in their novels.

The consequences of debt could be dire. The debtor’s home and assets could be seized, and in the early part of the Victorian era they could be thrown into Debtors’ prison – along with their wife and children - until they had paid what they owed. If they were unable to pay, they could declare bankruptcy but not before all their belongings and home had been taken.

Findmypast.com has just added 33,000 records from The Bankrupt Directory.  These reveal the details for all bankruptcies, between December 1820 and April 1843, which appeared in The London Gazette.  The level of detail differs from record to record, but usually you will discover a person’s home street and town, their occupation or trade, and the date that they appeared in The London Gazette. The records cover a large number of counties across England and Wales. They cost eight credits each, or are free to view with an Explorer subscription.

Sample bankruptcy record

Search for your ancestors in the bankruptcy records now

The county of Lancashire, comprising 1.6 million records, has been added to the 1851 census. These records come freshly transcribed from a new set of images, so if you’ve failed to find your ancestors on the 1851 census elsewhere, then you may just find them among these accurately transcribed new findmypast.com records.

Search for your ancestors in the 1851 census now

Coming in the next month: unfilmed 1851 records online exclusively at findmypast.com

A short time after the 1851 census records go live, findmypast.com will add transcriptions and reconstructed images for around 160,000 individuals from severely damaged  pages. They have been made available for the first time online at findmypast.com after a 14 year project to transcribe the original records by the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society (MLFHS).

The records for the Manchester, Chorlton, Salford, Oldham and Ashton-Under-Lyne registration districts were water damaged many years ago when the storage area they were kept in flooded. Some were so badly affected that no writing at all was visible and many were too fragile to be scanned.

Image courtesy of Ray Hulley, Co-ordinator of the 1851 unfilmed census project.

In 1991 a small team of London-based volunteers from the MLFHS began the painstaking process of transcribing the records, which were held at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane. As the documents were too fragile to withstand the glare of artificial light, the volunteers had to rely on natural daylight to read them.

Invisible text revealed

After The National Archives was established in Kew in 1997, the project was transferred and with the expertise and support of the conservation department there, the team made considerable advances in the recovery of the missing text. Using the latest ultraviolet equipment the team were able to see writing that had not been visible with natural daylight, and to re-examine documents that had already been transcribed to recover text that was invisible to the naked eye.

The transcribers followed a policy of ‘faithfulness to the original’ in accordance with best transcription practice, and words were only transcribed as far as they were legible – in many cases only parts of names or other details could be deciphered. In some cases street directories and rate books were used to confirm that names had been interpreted correctly, but the transcribers resisted the temptation to fill in information that they felt ‘should’ have been there.

The reconstructed image follows the same layout as the original, and as with other census images contains not just the information from the household, but the neighbouring houses as well.

Thanks to the statistical information that had been generated before the books were damaged, the transcription team knew that data from 217,717 individuals was missing. The team managed to retrieve 82 per cent of this data. We’re sure that you will agree that this is an impressive achievement, which would not have been possible without the immense dedication of Ray Hulley, the project leader, and his team of volunteers from the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society.

Help save records from being lost forever! Get involved with a project

Dedicated family historians up and down the country are working on other projects to make records like these available to family historians in Britain and around the world. If you would like to get involved with a project like this one you should contact the Federation of Family History Societies who will be able to give you information on your local family history society, as well as projects up and down the country.

The county of Lancashire, comprising over 4.5 million records, has been added to the 1901 census. As ever, each of these records comes newly transcribed from a set of freshly scanned high-quality images.

Find your Lancastrian ancestors in the 1901 census now

Lancashire in 1901

In 1901 Lancashire encompassed several hundred mill towns and collieries, which had sprung up during the industrial revolution. The seaside town of Blackpool had become a magnet for holidaymakers and particularly for residents of Lancashire’s mill towns, who flocked to Blackpool for wakes weeks: the week-long summer breaks when the cotton mills of a particular town would close.

A Lancashire soprano

Among the famous Lancastrians found on the 1901 census is Eva turner, who would make her name as an opera singer and received a DBE in 1962. On the 1901 census she is nine years old and living in Oldham with her parents and brother. Her father, Charles, is listed as an engine driver at a cotton mill (click image to enlarge):