By member Judy Purkiss

The 1921 Census was held on Sunday 19 June 1921.   This is different to the date printed on the census as the census was postponed from the original date.  FindMyPast states that this was due to a strike by coal miners and there was the prospect of a national strike which led Prime Minister, Lloyd George, to call a state of emergency.

The 1921 Census gives greater detail than previous census’, particularly around marital status, employment & education.  It was the first census to list ‘divorced’ as an option and the first time that the name of their employer was requested.

The 1921 UK Census is available to view digital images at the National Archives in Kew.  However, the majority of researchers will use subscription sites for online searches.

The Census has been exclusively available online at FindMyPast since the 6 Jan 2022.   It was exclusive for the last three years as they were the company who digitized and transcribed this set of records, and part of the agreement was the exclusivity period. Searching the 1921 Census with FindMyPast is either through subscription, on a pay-per-view basis or through a subscribing library.

Ancestry.com users will be pleased to know that the 1921 Census has now been published on their website as at the 7 Jan 2025. The “Who Do You Think You Are” magazine website states that “Ancestry has licensed the transcription produced by FindMyPast”.  This means any errors in the initial transcriptions will appear the same on both websites.  Searching the 1921 Census with Ancestry.com is either through subscription or through a subscribing library.

However, both websites allow users to submit corrections to errors, therefore it may still be worth searching both websites in case different search results appear based on the user submitted information.