1921 CENSUS: FACT-FILE
It was (only?) 20 years ago that the 1901 Census was revealed on the World Wide Web to a ravenous crowd of genealogists, and such was the hunger for the shiny new resource that the website crashed and had to remain closed for many months (from memory about a year). The Family Tree letters bag (yes, actual letters!) was bulging, and the subject of the glitchy website – run by Qinetiq for the Public Record Office (now The National Archives) – was even the topic of discussion in the House of Commons: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/2002/jun/10/1901-census
Nowadays, however, online census collections are absolutely central to the research of today’s family historians and I’m sure most of us couldn’t imagine ancestor-sleuthing without them. So it is thrilling to have a brand new census collection to be able to explore for clues about our families. It is, too, a bitter-sweet release, as researchers of ancestors in England and Wales will not get sight of a further new census collection until the 100-year closure period for the 1951 Census has expired, i.e. not until 2052 most likely (and that is with the proviso that future amendments are not made, with consideration to privacy etc, to the law).
1,095 females to 1,000 males
In 1921 there were 1,720,802 more females than males; in 1911 there had been 1,179,276 more females than males.
