Online census site brought to it knees

The 1901 census put online by the Public Record Office (PRO) last Wednesday has been withdrawn for one week. Efforts to adjust the site to cope with demand were not successful.

The PRO said in a statement on its website: "The site remains unable to meet continuing levels of demand. The PRO has agreed with Qinetiq's technical team to close internet access to the site for the next week for enhancements to take place."

Many users had started credit card sessions for access to digital copies of original documents and were then unable to complete the sessions because of demand on the site. The PRO said that users who were not able to finish such a session up until 6 January will not be charged.

The 1901 Online service is still available for personal visitors at the Family Records Centre in London, but access is limited to one hour per user by ticket.

Designed for an average of 1.2 million hits per day, the website received a constant average of 1.2 million hits per hour last week, according to QinetiQ, which won the £7m contract to digitise the census in November 1999.

The 1901 census records for England and Wales are supposed to be available online as a searchable database of more than 32 million people. The database links to digital copies of original census pages and can be searched by name, address, institution or place.

But worldwide interest from people wanting to find out what their ancestors were up to 100 years ago has been overwhelming ever since the site went live on Wednesday.

www.pro.gov.uk