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Today's youth 'work-shy and lazy' study finds

Findmypast.co.uk has just carried out a survey which has revealed that young Brits shy away from jobs that require hard graft and instead, one in six 18-24 year olds aspire to become a famous singer, actor or member of a band.

There has never been such a stark contrast between the career choices of today’s young people when compared to the manual jobs of their ancestors. In the 1911 census some of the most popular occupations recorded include working in domestic service, agriculture, mining, building and the cotton industry. In contrast, less than 1% of young Brits in the 21st century would like to have a manual job such as a builder or plumber.

Here you can see a 1911 census return for singer Tom Jones’ maternal grandparents, Albert Rees and Ada Jones, who were in the coal-mining industry. Jones is Tom’s stage rather than birth surname.

Click to enlarge

Debra Chatfield

Our marketing manager, Debra Chatfield (pictured right), says: “It seems the growing obsession with celebrity has really impacted on young people’s career choices these days, as our study reveals how the more non-traditional jobs now come high up on the wish-list.

“Times have certainly changed when it comes to young people’s career choices. A look at the 1911 census provides a fascinating insight into the professions of our ancestors and you can really see how times have dramatically changed. On the other hand, in some cases, it can be interesting to see how some families have carried the same profession down through the family tree to the modern day. In our recent study it was revealed that, worryingly, a fifth (22%) of those aged 18-24 years do not know what their ancestors did for a living.”

Find out what your ancestors did in our complete census records from 1841 to 1911.

Today’s youth ‘work-shy and lazy’ study finds

Findmypast.co.uk has just carried out a survey which has revealed that young Brits shy away from jobs that require hard graft and instead, one in six 18-24 year olds aspire to become a famous singer, actor or member of a band.

There has never been such a stark contrast between the career choices of today’s young people when compared to the manual jobs of their ancestors. In the 1911 census some of the most popular occupations recorded include working in domestic service, agriculture, mining, building and the cotton industry. In contrast, less than 1% of young Brits in the 21st century would like to have a manual job such as a builder or plumber.

Here you can see a 1911 census return for singer Tom Jones’ maternal grandparents, Albert Rees and Ada Jones, who were in the coal-mining industry. Jones is Tom’s stage rather than birth surname.

Click to enlarge

Debra Chatfield

Our marketing manager, Debra Chatfield (pictured right), says: “It seems the growing obsession with celebrity has really impacted on young people’s career choices these days, as our study reveals how the more non-traditional jobs now come high up on the wish-list.

“Times have certainly changed when it comes to young people’s career choices. A look at the 1911 census provides a fascinating insight into the professions of our ancestors and you can really see how times have dramatically changed. On the other hand, in some cases, it can be interesting to see how some families have carried the same profession down through the family tree to the modern day. In our recent study it was revealed that, worryingly, a fifth (22%) of those aged 18-24 years do not know what their ancestors did for a living.”

Find out what your ancestors did in our complete census records from 1841 to 1911.

The findmypast.co.uk stand at the upcoming Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE 2010 exhibition

The UK’s biggest family history event returns to London’s Olympia on 26-28 February 2010 for its fourth fascinating year and findmypast.co.uk will be there. Come and visit our stand where you can take your free seat on the findmypast.co.uk ‘tram’. There will be several ‘departures’ every day, each featuring a talk on how to start your journey into the past. There’s no need to book, just check the ‘departures board’ when you arrive to choose the time that suits you. 

You can also pick up some fantastic deals from our Edwardian shopkeeper in the 1911 shop. Offers include £25-worth of PayAsYouGo vouchers for £19.99, a three month subscription for £45 instead of £50 and a 12 month subscription for £135 instead of £150. These subscriptions include access to the 1911 census records as well as all the other great features we have to offer. When you buy any voucher worth £9.99 or more you’ll get a Family History Starter Pack with a free copy of our new video tutorials, designed to help you get the most out of our site.

There will be free access to the findmypast.co.uk website in our research bay so come along and get stuck into your research – you can meet the findmypast.co.uk team and pick their brains for tips!

We look forward to seeing you there.

Prizes awarded to survey participants

We really value your input at findmypast.co.uk. Completing our user surveys means that you provide us with ways in which we can improve our service to you. As a thank you for taking part in these surveys we have awarded a digital camera to the following people:

November 2009 – Mrs J Sheldon
December 2009 – Mr R Cartledge
January 2010 – Mr K Peterson

The prize is now a year’s Full subscription and will be awarded quarterly. The next winners will be drawn later in the year.

Competition winners

Once you subscribe to findmypast.co.uk we send you a series of emails to help with your research. One of them involves finding your great-great grandparents and we are happy to announce the current crop of winners. The following subscribers have been awarded a 12 month Full subscription:

November 2009 – DJ Bradley
December 2009 – Dr Roger Allen
January 2010 – Carole Sturgiss

We are now awarding the prize on a quarterly basis so the next winner will be drawn later in the year.

The London Collection launch

Findmypast.co.uk is pleased to offer a collection of records to help people track down their London-based ancestors and unearth the milestone events of famous Londoners from the past. The London Collection includes records of baptisms, marriages and burials which date back to 1538. These include significant dates in the lives of famous Londoners including Charles Dickens’ marriage in Chelsea in 1836, captured in the West Middlesex Marriage Index, and William Blake’s somewhat mysterious burial in 1827 at Bunhill Fields, detailed in the City of London Burial Index.

The collection also includes the records of baptisms in London’s Docklands, some of which provide a fascinating insight into popular baby names of the 1700s, including exotic-sounding names such as ‘Hephzibah’, ‘Delight’ and ‘Philadelphia’.

The findmypast.co.uk ‘London Collection’ includes:

• City of London Burial Index – records from all the churches in the City of London from 1813 to 1890
• West Middlesex Marriage Index – detailing 84,863 marriages in 61 parishes from 1538 to 1837
• London Docklands Baptisms – comprising 407,558 baptisms for London’s docklands areas 1712 to 1933
• London and West Kent Probate Indexes – mainly detailing wills and administrations from 1750 to 1858
• The Matchworkers’ Strike – listing participants of the strike of over 700 men, women and teenage boys and girls working at the Bryant and May factory in East London in 1888, the same year as the Jack the Ripper murders

City of London Burial Index records update

We have just added over 50,000 new City of London Burial Index records to findmypast.co.uk. The records are for St Andrew Holborn church for the period 1754-1812. You can view these records within the parish records collection on our site.

The original City of London Burial Index was created by Cliff Webb and produced by the West Surrey Family History Society in 1991 and re-issued in 1997. It contains details from 75 of the 98 churches within the City of London.

Find out more on our City of London Burials page.

New Lincolnshire parish records on findmypast.co.uk

We’ve just published around 77,000 new parish records for Lincolnshire from the Lincolnshire Family History Society. There are around 51,000 new marriage index records, 23,000 marriage bond records and 3,000 settlement certificate records. This makes a total of around 220,750 parish records for Lincolnshire. We are expecting more updates from Lincolnshire Family History Society in the future.

See the table below for the amount of Lincolnshire records now on our site:

Ask the Expert – disappearing act

Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘I hope you can please advise me about the following. I cannot find the entire family of my great grandfather in the 1901 census. I have them in the 1891 and 1911 censuses.

This involves father, mother and seven children, the eldest child being born in 1884 (he is shown at home still in 1911 census). I have dates from a birth certificate of the seventh child in 1897 in Islington, London and the date 1904 from the death certificate of the 2nd child in Cambridge. He was a journeyman builder-cum-bricklayer - is it possible for a whole family to disappear from the census?

Help please, I have tried looking for all the family separately on census searches and can find nothing.’ From Terry

Steve says: “The short answer is yes but it is not a simple answer, as the reasons for absence, or apparent absence, are many. Here are 10 to get you thinking. I am sure that some you will be able to discount as impossible or implausible from your knowledge of the family.

1. For whatever reason, the family’s householder schedule was not completed, or not collected, or was lost, before the enumerator filled in his enumeration book.
2. The family filled in their census return correctly but the enumerator relayed the information incorrectly into the enumeration book.
3. The family filled in their census form illegibly or inaccurately, and the enumerator faithfully entered the incorrect information, or their interpretation of it, into the enumeration book.
4. Some parts of each census were simply and irretrievably lost at some date prior to the microfilming of the originals. For 1901, for example, parts of Bloomsbury & St Giles (London), Deal (Kent) and Hovingham (Yorkshire) are known to be missing.
5. The family has been mis-transcribed or mis-indexed on the versions of the census you have used. If, however, you have viewed two or more different versions, it is unlikely that each version would have a mis-transcription of the original unless the original is of especially poor legibility.
6. The family were failed migrants. Up to 50% of intended emigrants fail; they spend a few months or years overseas and then return to their place of origin. In this scenario, your family was abroad in 1901, having emigrated after 1897 and returned before 1904.
7. Temporary employment overseas. Seasonal economic migrants are not as unusual as one might think. Men, with or without their families, would travel overseas for work. I am thinking less of what today we would call professional “business trips” and more of the working classes, for example, Cornish miners going to South Africa to earn money for six months, a year or longer in times of economic depression and unemployment in Britain.
8. The family may have been temporarily residing elsewhere within the British Isles.
9. The father was serving with the British forces overseas in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War in 1901 and his wife and children are hiding somewhere on the census returns as yet undiscovered.
10. The family is on the census but its members are dispersed, for example variously staying with grandparents, visiting relatives or boarding at schools, as appropriate. This is rare but perhaps not as rare as you might think: it makes it difficult to establish the whereabouts of each member of the family unit out of context.”

We hope this is useful to your research. If you would like to pose a question for Steve, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account.

Ask the Expert – Australian roots

Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘I have real family history problem that I am unable to solve and hope you can advise me of how to get out of the deadlock.

1. On 1 March 1868 at Ivy Cottage, Kennington Green, Lambeth, a baby girl, Gertrude Foote Patman, was born to Samuel Patman, architect, and Mary Ann Patman (formerly Foote).
2. On 26 April 1868 at St Mark’s Church, Kennington, Gertrude Foote Patman was christened and the baptism entry shows her father as Samuel Patman, surveyor, of Montague Road, Uxbridge.
3. 1869 voters’ register shows Samuel Patman at 89 Vauxhall Walk, Kennington, in Princes Ward.
4. On 7 June 1888 William Thomas Wills, my partner’s grandfather, marries Gertrude Foote at St Mary’s Church, Hardwicke, Bucks. Her father is not listed on marriage certificate. She was a spinster working as a servant.
5. On 25 February 1889 a baby boy, William George Patman Wills, was born to William and Gertrude at Waddesdon, Bucks.

Now this is all I can give you as I have been unable to trace the marriage of Samuel Patman to Mary Ann Foote. Neither can I find record of Samuel Patman in any census before or after 1868 and nothing in the 1871 or 1881 censuses as a married couple with baby Gertrude etc. In (4) you see that Gertrude loses her father’s surname when she gets married but in (5) she recognises her father’s name by using it when she names her first born son.

There is just one big mystery which despite many hours of searching I cannot solve so I am really hoping you can help.’ From Peter

Steve says: “This is not the sort of question which permits a quick or easy answer. However, in light of the inconclusive nature of your research to date, it is probably safe to conclude that Miss Foote and Mr Patman were not married. It was quite easy to register a birth, or baptise a child, as if the parents were married and without producing evidence of marriage of the parents. Whether or not the child was born illegitimately, the absence of a marriage certificate creates immediate problems when researching ancestry, as one is deprived of the age of the father and the name and occupation of his father, which are recorded on marriage certificates and are essential in confidently ascending to the earlier generation.

Moreover, as you cannot find a candidate Samuel Patman on census returns either side of 1868/69, a second and more tentative conclusion I would draw is that he may have been born outside England & Wales and his stay in the country may have been transitory. This assumes that his name is as stated and he did not have an alias. His name is not especially common. A quick search on the internet shows a 34-year old Samuel Patman leaving London aboard the Indus on 10 April 1871 and arriving in Brisbane on 20 July 1871. No occupation is shown. He was travelling in 2nd cabin, rather than in steerage, which might be consistent with his putative professional status.

There is of course no evidence that this is one and the same individual as the father of Gertrude. He would have been born circa 1837 which, being on the cusp of English & Welsh civil registration, is not ideal for research purposes and, of course, as suggested earlier, he may have been born elsewhere. However, if you have no other leads, you may wish to pursue the Australian migrant with view to eliminating him from your enquiry or tying him in.”

We hope this is useful to your research. If you would like to pose a question for Steve, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account.