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The 1939 Register

Marguerite said:
I made a blank search, just using the piece and item number and found her sister living at the same address. I still do not know who the "Head" of the household is, but I have found my aunts and the residence where my grandfather was living before he was hospitalised.
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This morning I visited another forum and read that the Reference Number is no longer showing. I checked it out and found this to be true.:(
 
Marguerite said:
This morning I visited another forum and read that the Reference Number is no longer showing. I checked it out and found this to be true.:(
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I found this too. Very frustrating. I presume they found too few people were buying credits as so much could be found without doing so by using the reference numbers. I wish I had looked up more earlier in the week!
 
KirstenB said:
I found this too. Very frustrating. I presume they found too few people were buying credits as so much could be found without doing so by using the reference numbers. I wish I had looked up more earlier in the week!
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Perhaps Peter will check on the validity of this, but sounds 'bullish' enough to be true if their pricing is anything to go by.
 
KirstenB said:
I found this too. Very frustrating. I presume they found too few people were buying credits as so much could be found without doing so by using the reference numbers. I wish I had looked up more earlier in the week!
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Good News! It is on your URL. I had trouble reading it correctly but copied it to a Word document and enlarged it. IT WORKS
 
Marguerite said:
I am now humming Frank Sinatra's song "They can't take that away from me"
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Thank you that was well spotted. I wonder whether FMP will try to change it. Interestingly having used ref data for some searches this week it has shown up quite a few transcription errors; more than I would have expected.

If I have got this right the oddest “error” I have found related to a set of my great grandparents. My information suggested there should just be the two of them at their address and both should be open as they were born in 1876. In practice I found Emily in the index with a “?” in the middle of her surname (presumably they couldn’t work out what letter it was) and confirmation on the preview that her ref ended in “9”. It also said that there was just one other person in the same household and it was an open record. There was no name given for the household just “Household”. There was no sign of my great grandfather under his surname or any variant. I was pretty sure of their address and a check using the reference number showed that just two individuals records related to that address (based on the numbers for the addresses on either side being ref 10 and 11 on one side and 5-7 on the other). However on looking at the records for their specific address it again had no household name, the first named person there appeared to be an open record but had no name or age but ref no. ending “8” which makes it likely that it was my great grandfather. In addition it stated there were no other open records (although Emily’s is open) just a closed one.
 
peter said:
You're right - it was nearly 2am and I confused my statistics.
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I think there are some transcription errors on some of the dates of birth. I was looking up to check if the 1939 entry agreed with the date of birth on a probable death entry. There was a match if I just entered the month and year, but not if I entered the exact date.
Yet again, the advice of entering less may yield more seems to apply.
 
Marguerite said:
Good News! It is on your URL. I had trouble reading it correctly but copied it to a Word document and enlarged it. IT WORKS
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Well spotted - I did notice this after your original post but was wary of mentioning it in case Findmypast close this loophole as well. Probably best to keep it to ourselves?
KirstenB said:
There was no name given for the household just “Household”.
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This usually indicates that the record for the head of household is closed.
 
peter said:
Well spotted - I did notice this after your original post but was wary of mentioning it in case Findmypast close this loophole as well. Probably best to keep it to ourselves?

This usually indicates that the record for the head of household is closed.
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Thank you Peter that makes general sense so maybe the head of household where my ggmother lived was closed and it wasn't my ggfather. However as one record says there are only two open record people at the address and the other says there is the unaamed person plus one closed record at the address and the ref numbers show only 2 people there it is confusing. If the unamed person is my ggfather as he was born 1876 it should be open.
 
peter said:
Well spotted - I did notice this after your original post but was wary of mentioning it in case Findmypast close this loophole as well. Probably best to keep it to ourselves?
Click to expand...

I agree, but how?? Maybe by private messages?
 
KirstenB said:
Thank you Peter that makes general sense so maybe the head of household where my ggmother lived was closed and it wasn't my ggfather. However as one record says there are only two open record people at the address and the other says there is the unaamed person plus one closed record at the address and the ref numbers show only 2 people there it is confusing. If the unamed person is my ggfather as he was born 1876 it should be open.
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'76' and '16' are easily confused - it depends on the handwriting. My aunt's record is open, even though she was born in 1916, but it looks as if the date is '76'. If you are getting different results for the same address it could mean that there are two households at this address.
 
Mike said:
Too late. This is already being discussed elsewhere. e.g. http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=734390.0
where there are some other good tips such as
- Find an exact DOB from an approximate DOB using free search only
- Find an address for a person using free search
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As long as it stays within the two forums it may be OK - the last thing we want is for Findmypast to respond with further changes that make searching more difficult.
 
peter said:
As long as it stays within the two forums it may be OK - the last thing we want is for Findmypast to respond with further changes that make searching more difficult.
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I think that is wishful thinking. Facebook is apparently alive with comments about the disappearence of the numbers.

The fact that FMP is engaged in such tactics does not endear it to me in the least.
 
Just because the numbers aren't displayed doesn't mean they aren't there. I easily found them in the pages source code.

[edit] and I am surely breaking FMP's Terms and Conditions
You must not ... modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Site or parts of the Site

So don't do it!
 
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Marguerite said:
The fact that FMP is engaged in such tactics does not endear it to me in the least.
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Isn't taking information without paying for it a bit like shop-lifting?

They have every right to close loopholes - they must have spent many millions, if not tens of millions on this project. Are we going to deny them the opportunity to recover their investment? If that happened it could be a disaster for researchers like us.
 
Yes but the information we are taking isn't what they are selling. We are just taking a code that makes searching easier. We still have to pay for the data.
 
peter said:
Isn't taking information without paying for it a bit like shop-lifting?

They have every right to close loopholes - they must have spent many millions, if not tens of millions on this project. Are we going to deny them the opportunity to recover their investment? If that happened it could be a disaster for researchers like us.
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I've been a subscriber to FMP for years and I object to being likened to a shop-lifter.

The idea of checking out one or two households by using the refererence numbers was to ensure I had the correct household. Without this information, I would certainly not download the file as the name of the household was unknown to me. With the added "shop-lifting" information I was able to ascertain that it was a relative of mine.

You also said:
quote
the last thing we want is for Findmypast to respond with further changes that make searching more difficult.
unquote

and now you find it is right for FMP to close loopholes.
 
Marguerite, that's exactly my point - as long as we used the extra information responsibly there was no problem, but once people started using them to glean information instead of paying to look at the images it became rather less scrupulous. That's why I said we shouldn't publicise these tips - if everybody knew about them it could cost Findmypast millions, and they would have no choice but to close the loopholes.
 
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