The writer of this email has NOT provided you with correct information : we scan all censuses in piece order which starts from London and at the point it was written we were not planning to release the 1911 in its entirety, as they should have known.

Apologies for you being misinformed, please help me make sure it does not happen again.

But, as I have said previously, as there is nothing we can now do to change anything, we will just have to “accept” what has happened.

As requested, I insert (below) a copy of the message I received about the 1901 Census. I can only applaud the writer of this note below, as it is the nearest findmypast.com have ever come to acknowledging that their southern-centric attitudes and policies DO HURT.

COPY . . . .

From: info

Date: 04/11/2008 09:26:53

Subject: RE: 1901 Census

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your email.

Please accept my apologies for the inappropriate response you received from my colleague.

Admittedly, findmypast.com has been rather southern centric in producing the counties on its censuses in the past and seems to have continued the trend with the 1901 census. We do usually start with London as it is felt that, statistically, more customers are likely to have a relation based there. Of course, this is no excuse for what may be perceived as the southern centric approach you outline in your email.

I have passed your comments on to our Data Team for further consideration, as I know we often receive enquiries about the larger northern counties such as Yorkshire and Lancashire when we release new data sets.

We are currently working to produce the 1911 census which will be available at 1911census.co.uk and we hope to release the whole of England in one fell swoop, thus avoiding any such favouritism over counties that we have displayed in the past.

I hope that you find this amenable.

Kind regards

The reason the 1901 census on findmypast.com is not complete is that it is a completely new (and therefore significantly more accurate) version. It was only started at the tail end of next year, and has to contend for resources with the 1911 census and a new version of 1851. 3 censuses simultaneously, plus the other records we are digitising is a lot of work. However, all English counties of 1901 should be complete by end of April.

1911 census - the last 3 English counties should also be complete by end of April.

In terms of your continued jibes about our supposed north/south divide - we’ve covered this at length, we’ve explained why the pieces are scanned in the order they are. You can either choose to accept that or not. Easy on the sarcasm, if you want us to continue to reply to your comments.

Any news on the following Ian, while I’m on.

- 1901 Census. When will Northumberland and Durham be included on the Findmypast.com “1901 Census” site? (can you believe it - we still do NOT, in 2009, have access to your 1901 Census site.
- 1911 Census. Any news on Northumberland?

Reading the above, you can understand how we got the misconception (particularly re 1901) that your organisation had NEVER been outside the M25.

You know, your ‘1901 site’ promised me (promised me in writing) that all the “1911″ counties WOULD be released at once, to avoid a repeat of the 1901 favouratism tag. Hmmmm.

York: June 27th
Gateshead: September 12th

In fact, we attend every year and have done for a long time! Publicity levels from us will be similar, although obviously the events are not quite on the scale of the London event, which is the largest in the world and runs for 3 days.

Stay signed up to the 1911 newsletter for more information.

Could you possibly let me and everyone know the dates?

AND, will you be giving it the same masses of ‘National Publicity’ on this website and elsewhere, that you did the London one? - to make sure everyone gets to know about it.

My goodness Ian - this is AMAZING news!!