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Archiver > GENBRIT > 2002-01 > 1009967068


From: "Jonathan Horniblow" <>
Subject: 1901 Census - well, that was a non-event!
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 10:24:28 -0000


The 1901 Census was supposed to go live at 9am this morning.

At 7am, I checked the site:

http://www.pro.gov.uk/census/ It said:
"The most eagerly awaited genealogical event of this millennium is nearly
here. From 9am (GMT) on Wednesday 2 January you will be able to access the
1901 Census returns for England and Wales over the Internet."

http://www.census.pro.gov.uk/
Just had a load of: "HTTP 404 - File not found" errors.

OK, so it wasn't 9 yet.

But by 9:20am, nothing had changed. No info available.

By 9:50 am, the following had appeared on the front page:

"1901 Census Online
The Public Record Office and our partners, QinetiQ, are pleased to announce
that the 1901 Census Online service officially went on live on 2 January.
The demand has been so great since the service went live that the site is
currently busy."

The other pages were still as shown above. Perhaps the above should read:

"1901 Census Online
The Public Record Office is embarrassed to announce that QinetiQ was so
chuffed at spending several hundred thousand pounds changing it's name from
something meaningful and recognisable, that we were both caught out when 9am
came. Following several furtive attempts to sort arse out from elbow, we
have now given up, and will probably relaunch the site in June, after an
expensive consultation process".

So, don't hold your breath!

You could, of course, try emailing them. Oh, no you can't, that's broken as
well:
Click on submit, and you get:

"HTTP Error 405
405 Method Not Allowed

The method specified in the Request Line is not allowed for the resource
identified by the request. Please ensure that you have the proper MIME type
set up for the resource you are requesting.

Please contact the server's administrator if this problem persists."

Good old governmental departments!





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