1841 Census now online

1841 census for England and Wales has been published online.

Documenting the population on June 6, it records Queen Victoria in Buckingham Palace and Charles Dickens in Devonshire Terrace, London.

It was the only census available to the public that had not been put on the web. Now, records from 1841 to 1901 taking in about 165 million names are available online.

But family historians may be disappointed - the 1841 census rounds ages up and down to the nearest five years and does not give places of birth.

It also took four years to digitise as it was done in pencil rather than pen.

Josh Hanna, of website Ancestry, said: "Around six per cent of the pages needed special scanning."

The UK has a census every 10 years.