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Lost access to 1871 census for England and Wales

J M Hutson
J M Hutson ✭
January 29, 2022 edited January 31, 2022 in Search

For the last week or so, any attempt to "review and attach" a record in the 1871 census for England and Wales returns a message that says

Well, this is unexpected...

We can help you search literally billions of records, but we can't seem to find the page you're looking for.

It used to work just fine, and all the other censuses still seem to work. It's just the 1871.

I'm using a non-LDS account, but that hasn't restricted census access before.

Tagged:
  • England
  • Access to Census records
0

Answers

  • A van Helsdingen
    A van Helsdingen ✭✭✭✭✭
    January 29, 2022

    During the last few months there has been a technical issue with the 1871 census. A substantial proportion (at least 10 million) of the Indexes for that census have been lost/accidentally deleted. See: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/91797/england-and-wales-census-1871-problems/p1

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  • J M Hutson
    J M Hutson ✭
    January 29, 2022

    Thank you!

    That's quite a confusing thread. It's hard to tell which of the responses are authoritative.

    It's a long thread and I read most of it, but I didn't actually see anything about indexes that were lost or accidentally deleted. Is there a way you could send me a link to something that describes that specific issue?

    The thread goes back to mid-2021. The OP asked about searching indexes, but many of the replies seem confused about whether the problem is about images or indexes. And there are also recent comments about a contract that expired in November 2021, which might be my problem but can't be the OP's one.

    I see items from the 1871 census in my searches, or as prompts under "Merge by ID", but then can't see the records themselves when I try to "review and attach".

    I fully understand that non-LDS accounts can't see census images. I use ancestry for that. But I do want to be able to link 1871 census records to people on familysearch.

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  • A van Helsdingen
    A van Helsdingen ✭✭✭✭✭
    January 29, 2022

    I agree with you: that wasn't the best thread on this issue. This issue has been discussed many times recently, so try searching for "1871 census" in the searchbar for this forum. Users with "mod" are moderators and are employees or official volunteers for FamilySearch. However that does not make their answers "authoritative" or "official". For official answers, see the Help Center: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/landing

    The basic issue with the 1871 census is that there's only 9 million Index records, whereas there was 20+ million people counted on census day. Therefore at least 10 million names have disappeared. FS engineers are yet to restore these names.

    In November there was a contract change between FS and the UK National Archives (TNA). LDS members have lost their access to images of UK censuses from home and now, like everyone else, must visit a FHC or Affiliate Library to get free access. In theory this should not affect access to the indexes.

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