1. Go to the PRO's advanced search page to start a session.
2. Use your browser's <Back> function to return to this page.
3. Go to Advanced search by personal name.

This is a noise-free interface to the PRO's bloated 1901 census search system: no images, no Javascript, no stylesheets, no time-wasting superfluous HTML. Use the linked form for advanced searching of the 1901 census of England and Wales (but not Scotland) by personal name.

Note that no checking of input is done (as with Javascript in the PRO pages), so input that doesn't conform to what's expected by the search system will probably cause errors. If you want digitised images of the census pages or details from the transcription, you will have to pay for them using the PRO's search system.

Just what really went on with the PRO's 1901 census Web site? Many would like to know, but undoubtedly the truth is "commercial in confidence". It cannot have taken 7 months to make modifications to the system.

The following are possible, and not mutually exclusive, reasons.

• The search system was not in fact ready for operation at the start of 2002 and the "system overload" problem was simply an excuse while it was being finished.
• The database was seriously damaged by a cracker soon after the system was enabled. In an early note about the work that needed to be done the PRO strongly hinted that there had been a security problem.
• Those responsible for the development of the Web site aren't up to the task. It's hardly a cutting-edge system. The LDS have been running their <www.familysearch.org> site for years, and although it doesn't serve up image files, it must take a hammering.

And who is paying for the ongoing work? No doubt the British tax-payer. One would hope that there are penalty clauses in the contract for the development of the system, but we're unlikely to be told as any such clause would be commercial in confidence. It's a "nice little earner", to be sure.

And why didn't the PRO long ago pull the plug and give another organisation the task of getting the system running?