Find My Past just added a full set of images for the 1881 England and Wales census – that’s over 1.25 million images for nearly 29 million individuals that are now ready for you to search. The transcription of the census has been available for some time, but until now the images were not. As part of a mammoth project we’ve scanned each census return at high resolution and matched it with the corresponding transcription, making the images fully searchable.

Find your ancestors on their crisp new images: explore the 1881 census now Find out more through the census images

Transcriptions are an invaluable research tool, but it’s always best to check a transcription against the original census return, to verify its accuracy and to get a feel for the original document. The images will also reveal details of your ancestors’ neighbours, and you may well find that they had relatives who lived nearby. You can use this new information to compile a list of possible friends and acquaintances, and to build a better picture of the area and times in which your ancestors lived.

Surf the censuses worry-free with an Explorer

It’s free to view 1881 census transcriptions but it costs three PayAsYouGo credits to view an image. Explorer subscribers, however, can access all of our 1841-1901 census images and transcriptions at no extra cost. The Explorer subscription gives you the freedom to view the records without worrying about your credits depleting.

Report 1881 census transcription errors

With the images in place it’s now possible for Find My Past to check transcriptions against the original returns and correct any errors. You can now report 1881 transcription errors in the same way as on the other censuses, using the ‘report transcription change’ button found at the top of the transcription or image.

Best of luck with your research, The findmypast.com team