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Ruth



The 1911 is only available online. There is currently a fee to download

images but shortly there will be free access at seven archives and

libraries in England and Wales - see The National Archives news

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/stories/337.htm 



By accident I found that by using the advance search and putting # in

the reference field you can search by place of birth - so I found 616

people from Barbados and 501 from Barbadoes - you still have to pay to

access the images but it should be possible to pull out the results to

identify clusters. Bear in mind that the forms were completed by

individual heads of households and so the handwriting may not have been

easily read by the transcribers. Also, you can't see the place of birth

field so if someone entered Jamaica Road, Southwark as place of birth it

will be found by a search for Jamaica.



You may be interested to note that these returns include military and

naval returns for personnel serving overseas so I have found the entries

to the West India Regiment in Africa but having difficulty narrowing

down the returns for the regiment in Jamaica.



The census data is being supplied to the UK Data Archive at Essex

University who are doing a cleanup of the data to allow academics to run

complicated searches such as nurses born in Lancashire who now live in

Yorkshire type enquiry. I understand that some census years are

available at http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/



I started something similar when the 1851 census was launched and I

couldn't find any clusters for Caribbean people - they were scattered

throughout the country with higher numbers in London, the Home Counties

and Bristol. Most people born in the Caribbean tended to fall into a

small number of groups:

-people born to people temporarily residing in the Caribbean such as

army, accountants, lawyers, managers, public servants and sailors

-children of settlers being educated in England and Wales

-settlers migrating to the UK as landholders and annuitants (pensioners)

- possibly due to the economic and social changes which were occurring

in the Caribbean at this time.



I found very few people with 'working class' type occupations such as

servants and labourers.



I only found one person where there was any clue as to ethnicity but my

gut reaction is that the vast majority were 'White' of pure or mostly

European descent.



And yes, it was a real challenge identifying the different ways places

in the Caribbean were spelt by the enumerators - and even then I can't

be sure from the index that all of those born in Nassau were from the

Bahamas!



Guy



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-----Original Message-----

From: The Black and Asian Studies Association

[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ruth Paley

Sent: 29 August 2009 13:09

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: 1911 census



What I have found possible is to search on an obviously ethnic name -

easier for the Indian subcontinent than other places.  So a search for

Khan, Singh,  Gupta turns up some very interesting results.

 

It is possible to search by name and place of birth - so I could get

results for people surnamed Thompson born in Jamaica and could repeat

the search substituting Indies to catch W Indies or West Indies.  

 

There is a birth place search but in order to use it you have to

specifiy a TNA reference; but most towns/localities cover more than one

reference so searching for people born overseas but now living in

Woolwich for example is a very long and tedious task.  It would be a lot

simpler if one could just search on birthplace, or even birthplace plus

locality.

 

I will have to check next time I go to TNA whether there is a microfilm

and which local offices have it.  The online version does not seem to be

widely available except by paid subscription and for the sort of

searches I was contemplating that would be prohibitive. I'd have thought

searching by birthplace was fairly important and wonder if I've missed

some way of doing it easily.

 

Regards

Ruth



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