News
2nd December
2010
PRONI
Launches Wills Database
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has launched an
index to wills from the civil District Probate Registries of Armagh,
Belfast and Londonderry, covering the period 1858 to 1943. The database
also includes digitised copies of wills from 1858 to 1900.
The Northern Ireland Minister for Culture, Mr. Nelson McCausland, said
of the new database: “One of PRONI’s key goals is to digitise
key cultural resources and make them easily available to a worldwide
audience. This free of charge application will therefore be of enormous
assistance to anyone trying to trace their genealogical roots and will
be of particular help to those wanting to begin their research from
the comfort of their own home.
“In recent years there has been a huge increase in people researching
their family history and trends have shown that a large number of these
people are from outside the UK. I am sure this new application will
be of particular interest to this international audience.”
With reference to next year’s opening of the new PRONI headquarters,
Mr. McCausland said: “I recently had the priviledge to visit the
stunning new PRONI headquarters at [Belfast's] Titanic Quarter. This
much needed £30million investment in our cultural infrastructure
was provided by the Northern Ireland Executive. The new state-of-the-art
facility will open to the public early next year and will protect Northern
Ireland’s irreplaceable archives in a safe and secure environment.”
The new wills database can be found here.
25th November
2010
Irish
Times columnist highlights work and successes of CIGO
On
Monday just passed in his weekly genealogy column in The Irish Times,
Irish genealogist John Grenham drew attention to the work of CIGO. Having
subtly sketched out the "feuding, committee politics and in-fighting"
that all too often besets Irish genealogy he then went on to say "one
body that can take much of the credit for fostering genealogical common
sense is the Council of Irish Genealogical
Organisations. As its very sensible name indicates, CIGO acts as an
umbrella group for others, comprising 14 constituent organisations in
Ireland and 12 overseas. The group's main role is to lobby for improved
access to research material. It has had some spectacular successes,
including the amendment of the Civil Registration Act of 2004 to require
the inclusion of detailed family information in death records."
You
can read the full story here.
10th November
2010
New Associate
Members for CIGO
The
following organisations have recently joined CIGO as associate members:
from Australia: the Queensland
Family History Society and the South
Australian Genealogy and Heraldry Society; from the UK: the
Catholic Family History
Society and the Lancashire Family
History and Heraldry Society; from the USA: FamilySearch
(formerly the Genealogical Society of Utah) and the Irish
American Family History Society.
3rd November
2010
CIGO
AGM
The
Annual General Meeting of CIGO took place in Dublin this evening. At
the meeting, outgoing chairman Steven Smyrl delivered the chairman's
annual report which highlighted
CIGO's campaigns and successes during the past year. Paddy Waldron of
Clare Roots Society was elected chairman for the coming year. The AGM
concluded with a talk by Fiona Ross, Director of the National Library
of Ireland, entitled 'Fact, Fiction & Public Record'.
22nd
September 2010
UK
1939 National Register - Latest Update
The
Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations continues with its campaign
to obtain full access to data recorded about deceased persons from the
United Kingdom’s war time National Register. After high profile
campaigns led by renowned professional genealogists Steven Smyrl
(CIGO’s executive liaison officer) and Guy Etchells, at the end
of last year the National Health Service Information Centre (NHSIC)
finally conceded a public right of access to data from the National
Register. It introduced its ‘1939 National Register Cost Recovery
Service’, but then astounded all by disclosing only the data as
recorded on the 29th September 1939 and continuing to withhold
subsequent annotations to the register about dates of death and changes
of surname. The NHSIC invoked section 44(1) of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000, which is an absolute bar based upon the premise
that some other piece of existing legislation provides an exemption
against disclosure. The NHSIC held that such a bar to disclosure was
contained in section 42(4) of the Statistics and Registration Service
Act 2007.
However, CIGO believed otherwise and in June decided to challenge the
NHSIC’s policy. We requested disclosure of the date of death from
the National Register for a Mr. Theophilus Collins Baldwin who was born
in Ramsgate, Kent on the 9th October 1847, which made him born 163
years ago! We were aware that Mr. Baldwin was said to have lived to a
very great age. In due course the NHSIC refused our application and in
turn we appealed to the UK Information Commissioner. On CIGO’s
behalf the Information Commissioner approached the NHSIC and indicated
that by the 17th September they must either disclose the requested data
or apply the exemption and then await the Commissioner’s
adjudication in the form of a Decision Notice.
At the very last minute, on the 17th, the NHSIC disclosed that Mr.
Baldwin died on the 24th January 1948, aged 100! In their letter the
NHSIC indicated that “in future any requests for information
about date and place of death, where we hold this information, will be
part of the 1939 National Register Cost Recovery Service”. Given
this, CIGO advises that in future when using the Cost Recovery Service
specific mention should always be made by the applicant that they
require all data noted in the National Register.
In communication with the NHSIC the Information Commissioner stated
clearly that he was of the opinion that “section 42(4) [of the
Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007] is irrelevant when it
comes to considering whether disclosure would be prohibited [by that
Act]”. Further, he questioned the NHSIC’s interpretation of
the term ‘personal data’ indicating that “the
Commissioner’s definition of ‘personal data’ requires
that information must relate to an identifiable living individual.
Information about the deceased does not constitute personal
data”. In its response the NHSIC admitted that its reliance upon
section 44(1) of the FOIA was wrong and that the requested data should
not have been withheld. The Information Commissioner’s Good
Practice Team has now been called in to work with the NHSIC to
“improve its general request handling”.
CIGO’s success is yet a further validation of its public access
policy regarding the National Register and clearly demonstrates how the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 can be successfully utilised to the
benefit of genealogists.
22nd
September 2010
New
Board for National Library of Ireland announced
Mary
Hanafin, TD., Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport today (Wednesday
22ndSeptember, 2010) announced the appointment of a new Board of
Directors for the National Library of Ireland. The appointments made by
the Minister are as follows:
Mr. David Harvey Chairman
Chief Executive of City Channel Ltd, Ireland. Chairman of the
national St Patrick’s Day Festival organisation and recently
assumed the Chairmanship of Dublin Contemporary 2011.
Prof. Diarmaid Ferriter
Author, historian and university lecturer, Professor of Modern
Irish History at University College Dublin.
Dr. Marian Fitzgibbon
Head of the School of Humanities in Athlone Institute of
Technology.
Mr. Brian Halpin – FCCA.
Former Deputy DG and Secretary of the Central Bank of
Ireland.
Mr. Patrick McMahon
Galway City and County Librarian, former President of the Library
Association of Ireland
Ms. Carol Maddock
Information Systems National Library of Ireland. Nominated by the staff
of the National Library.
Mr. Des Marnane
Historian, writer and teacher. Hon. Sec. Tipperary Historical
Society.
Mrs Susan Philips
Lecturer involved in community and rural affairs. Nominee and Council
Member of Royal Dublin Society.
Ms. Pat Quinn
Secondary school teacher of English and History.
Mr. Paul Rellis
Managing Director of Microsoft Ireland.
Mr. H. Paul Shovlin
Company director, business consultant. Nominee and Council Member of
Royal Dublin Society.
Prof. Robert Spoo
Robert Spoo is a member of the faculty at The University of Tulsa
College of Law. He has a law doctorate from Yale University and a Ph.D
in English from Princeton University. His particular expertise is in
copyright, trademark and intellectual property.
Announcing the new board members Minister Hanafin said ''I am
extremely pleased that these very experienced and talented people have
agreed to serve on the Board of the National Library of Ireland. They
will form the second Board to be appointed since the Library became an
autonomous body in 2005. The new Board Members possess a range of
exceptional skills and experience that can be used to steer and improve
the fortunes of what is one of Irelands premier and venerable national
cultural institutions, in difficult times. The role of our national
cultural institutions, like the National Library, was never more
critical. The skills set of these new members will assist the Library
in using new technology, understanding copyright issues and linking
into local and national library users.”
The appointments are made for a five year period, subject to progress
on restructuring between the National Library, the National Archives
and the Irish Manuscripts Commission. In announcing the new Board,
Minister Hanafin paid special tribute to the work of the outgoing Board
under the Chairmanship of Gerard Danaher, S.C.
20th July
2010
Lost
Cousins
LostCousins
is a website where family historians who share the same ancestors can
'discover' each other, exchange information and collaborate on future
research. The connections are made using census data and the 1911 Irish
census is one of seven sets of census returns that can be utilised in
this way on the Lost
Cousins website. Other census returns cover Britain, the US and
Canada.
19th June
2010
GRONI
The
General Register Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI) has announced that
it is to extend its public searchroom in both size and the number of PC
terminals available for public access. In future, the searchroom will
have over twenty public computer positions thus negating to constant
need to book weeks in advance. Also, GRONI has completed the firtst
stage of its computerisation project. The NI Birth Indexes now note
mothers' maiden surnames for every entry from when registration first
began in 1864.
The
Minister for Finance & Personnel, Sammy Wilson MLA, has informed
CIGO that the delay to the passing of the Civil
Registration Bill 2007 relates to various amendments which
need to be made to the Bill on foot of other legislation which has been
passed by the Northern Ireland Assembly since the Bill was commenced in
2007. Once the required changes have been identified and drafted the
Bill will continue through its parliamentary procedures.
18th June
2010
www.irishgenealogy.ie
On
June 17 th at St. Werburgh's Church of Ireland parish church in Dublin
Mary Hanafin TD, Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, launched the
latest tranche of data to be added to the website irishgenealogy.ie.
The website, sponsored by her department, contains an index to church
records (and scanned images for many parishes) from around Ireland. The
site is entirely free to use. Until recently, the site contained only
Catholic records from two counties, comprising the entire parish
records for Co. Kerry and a small number for the city of Dublin. But,
with the latest additions, the site now also includes original Church
of Ireland records, from counties Kerry, Cork, Dublin and Carlow and is
supplemented with the various published transcripts of those parishes
whose records were subsequently destroyed in 1922 when the Public
Record Office of Ireland was consumed by fire. The website now contains
more than two million records, all of which can be accessed online at
no cost.
Much of the surviving Church of
Ireland parishes records for Dublin city are included, some dating back
to the early seventeenth century. Significantly, even though these are
'Protestant' records, up until the opening of the city's cemeteries in
the 1830s, the parish burial registers generally include all
denominations.
Contracts have been signed with data
agencies to continue the work with the completion of the Catholic
parish records for Dublin and for south and west Co. Cork (which
comprise the RC diocese of Cork & Ross) before the end of the year.
At that time about a further million records will be added to the
website.
Making
the scanned images of the various parish registers available online (in
addition to the indexes) will have the added benefit of preventing yet
further wear and tear of the original records.
Website: www.irishgenealogy.ie
3rd June
2010
1901
Census of Ireland
The
1901 Census of Ireland has been published online at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/
today.
12th April
2010
Archives
in Crisis Symposium
Saturday
10th April saw over 250 archivists, readers, genealogists, students,
staff and researchers pack into Trinity's arts block for the 'Archives
in Crisis' symposium. Such an overwhelming turn out proves beyond any
doubt that there is strong opposition to the Government's plan to merge
Ireland's National Archives into the National Library.
At a
time when it has almost become impossible to motivate public opinion,
this extraordinarily well attended event will send a very strong and
clear message to Mary Hanafin TD, the new Minister for Tourism, Culture
& Sport, that those who work within the world of archives need to
be fully consulted before any draft legislation is published. As an
initial step the minister could show good faith by moving quickly to
complete the appointment of the National Archives Advisory Council
(NAAC) which is outstanding since the last NAAC went out of office in
2007. The appointment of the NAAC is a statutory requirement under
section 20 of the National Archives Act 1986.
You
can read more about this story here
and in The
Irish Times (12th April).
16th
February 2010
UK
Government Set to Abolish Edited Electoral Register?
CIGO
has discovered that out of the blue, and only eight years after it was
first created, the British government is proposing to abolish the
publicly available UK Edited
Electoral Register .
While access to the Full Electoral Register is limited to purposes
relating to elections, crime detection and fraud prevention, the
Edited
Electoral Register (which
anyone can opt out of) is open to all. When completing the yearly
application form to be entered onto the annual electoral register each
UK citizen can choose whether or not to be included in the publicly
available Edited
Electoral Register .
In
October 2007, Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minster, commissioned Dr Mark
Walport and Richard Thomas " to undertake an independent review of
the use of personal information in the public and private sector
". Amongst a number of recommendations is one that the Edited
Electoral Register should cease to be commercially available and if
this proposal is carried that it should be abolished as it would no
longer serve any purpose.
The
UK Justice Minister, Michael Wills, has admitted that " there are
strong opinions on the future of the Edited Register and before
considering any changes we need to further understand the impact that
this may have on different groups of people. The Government has noted Dr. Mark Walport and
Richard Thomas's recommendation that the Edited Register should be
abolished. But we also recognise that the edited version of the
electoral register acts as a comprehensive list of names and addresses
of use to businesses, organisations and individuals ." The UK government has launched a period of
consultation which they say " will help us consider the potential
impact of the changes proposed ." The Ministry of Justice Press
Office say that the consultation " aims to build a firmer evidence
base about the advantages and disadvantages of the edited version of
the electoral register and the impact of any changes made to it ."
And that " views and evidence are invited from the public and other
stakeholders about how they could be affected by its abolition ..
On the basis of the evidence gathered, the government will consider
a range of options for the future of the Edited Register including
abolition, changing the process by which individuals are included on
it, or improving public awareness of it. "
However,
the consultation seeks views on six proposed options, none of which
includes 'no change' which might suggest that the abolition of the
Edited Electoral Register in one form or another is a foregone
conclusion. The six proposals are:
i)
abolish the Edited Register as soon as practicable.
ii)
set a timescale or trigger point for abolition of the Edited Register.
iii)
abolish the Edited Register as soon as practicable, but consider
extending access to the full electoral register.
iv)
retain the Edited Register, but impose restrictions in legislation on
who can purchase it and for what purposes.
v)
replace the current 'opt out' provision on the Edited Register with an
'opt in' option.
vi)
improve guidance for the public about the Edited Register.
For
genealogists, it looks as if the last of the six options would be the
best to plump for, "improve guidance for the public about the Edited
Register". More information about this issue and how to submit your
views can be found on the Ministry
of Justice website. The period of consultation closes on
Tuesday, 23rd February 2010 . This issue is urgent and
CIGO cannot impress enough that a clear message should be sent to the
UK Justice Minister, Michael Wills, that genealogists continue to
require unfettered access to the UK Edited Electoral Register.
12th
February 2010
Major
Release of Personal Data from UK ‘War Time’ National
Register
The National
Health Service Information Centre (NHS-IC) has announced the launch of a
new fee-paying
service giving access to historic data held on approximately 35
million deceased individuals whose names were recorded on the ‘National
Register for England and Wales’ compiled in 1939. In essence
this data is similar to census data in that it is arranged by household
and includes basic details about the entire UK population (England &
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) as it stood in 1939 at the outbreak
of war. The NHS-IC’s announcement is made on foot of successful
Freedom of Information Act requests by both Mr. Steven Smyrl
and Mr. Guy Etchells,
both professional genealogists.
The National Register
The National Register, often referred to as the ‘1939
Schedule’, was created under The
National Registration Act 1939 (NRA) and was an emergency
measure which took a snap-shot of the entire UK population on 29th
September 1939. The data recorded was used to issue identity cards and
for the ‘calling up’ of men and women to the Armed Forces
for the war effort. A number of 'sample' blank pages and forms from the
register can be seen here.
From 1948 the National Register was used for both national registration
(until that ended in the early 1950s) and for the creation of the NHS.
For the NHS it was used to establish and maintain a register,
containing personal details of each living person’s registration
with an NHS General Practitioner in each constituent part of the United
Kingdom. Subsequently, personal data was added into the National
Register in the form of annotations to the data originally collected
under the NRA. The data was constantly kept up to date as a manual
patient register until the computerised NHS Central Register was
launched 1991. As such, the register holds data about both living and
deceased people. Many of those who were already elderly in 1939 would
now of course have been born in the middle of the nineteenth century
and in a few cases even before Queen Victoria ascended the throne in
1837!
The NRA compelled the population to provide the following information:
full names; sex; date of birth; profession; home address; marital
status; and whether a member of one of the UK Armed Forces. From 1948
additional data was added to the National Register (up until the
creation of the NHS Central Register in 1991) including: changes of
name; and, where relevant, the date and place of death.
The individual ‘schedules’ (these are the forms upon which
the original information was recorded on 29th September 1939) were
until 2008 held by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but were
transferred to the new NHS-IC in that year. Up until that time ONS had
ran a very popular service called ‘Traceline’ which for a
fee would search the National Register (and the annotated records
created after 1939) in hopes of locating an entry for a given
individual. Traceline would then either offer to forward a letter to
that person if they appeared (from the records) to be still living - or
if deceased they would provide the enquirer with the date and place of
death (and alternative surname(s) where a married woman was concerned).
In April 2008 Steven Smyrl (one of CIGO's two Executive Liaison
Officers) challenged this decision with an appeal to the UK Information Commissioner. The NHS-IC
used a number of delaying tactics and it took until September 2009 when
they finally relented and took heed of the Information
Commissioner’s guidance in relation to the application of the
DPA. The NHS-IC had tried to argue that it could not answer
Steven’s enquiry for information about a particular person who
appeared in their records because to process such a request would be to
infringe the privacy of the “data subject”. He successfully
argued that such a stand did not make sense as the DPA does not extend
to the deceased – a principle that the UK Information
Commissioner had conveyed to the NHS-IC during the period of their
investigation. Finally, in September and October 2009 the NHS-IC
relented and disclosed the information requested and included various
addresses and alternative dates of birth for the deceased person.
Subsequently, in correspondence with Steven the Information
Commissioner described his appeal to them as one which
“actually raised some interesting and novel points concerning
data protection and the application of the Freedom of Information
Act”.
Although Steven was the first person to successfully obtain information
(in September 2009) from the National Register under the provisions of
the Freedom of Information Act, it was Guy
Etchells’ case which initially caught the interest of the UK
media.
Like Steven, Guy (who is a professional genealogist based in Yorkshire
and who was pivotal in the early release of the 1911 census for England
& Wales) had also been campaigning for the release of data from the
National Register. When the register was transferred from ONS to NHS-IC
he continued his campaign and applied for the full details of all
people noted at a particular address in England. The NHS-IC refused to
disclose the data Guy requested and he too appealed to the UK
Information Commissioner. In November 2009 the Commissioner issued a Decision
Notice upholding the NHS-IC policy of not disclosing data about
living people but finding in Guy’s favour that he should have
been given the data relating to those at the given address who were
deceased.
Accessing the National Register for England & Wales will cost £42
per enquiry and for this the enquirer will be provided with the full
details about each individual at the same address as recorded in September
1939. More details can be found here.
In Scotland the cost will be only £13 and more information can be found
on the website of the Scottish General
Register Office. However, at this time it is not clear how access
will be managed for the Northern Ireland part of the National Register
as the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) recently admitted
that the collection, which comprises many hundreds of volumes, “is
extremely large, is completely uncatalogued and is stored in our offsite
storage facility.”! PRONI can be contacted through their
website.
25th
January 2010
Federation of Family
History Societies' January 'Ezine'
published
The UK Federation
of Family History Societies (FFHS) has published theJanuary edition of
its Internet magazine, Ezine. It contains an
interesting article about early Irish maps.
23rd
January 2010
SGNI
Calling for PRONI to Rethink 'Move' Closure
The Society of
Genealogists Northern Ireland (SGNI) are calling for the Director of
the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Mrs. Aileen
McClintock, to think again about the proposed closure of PRONI for up
to eight months to allow for the removal of the archives from PRONI's
current home to new premises in Belfast'sTitantic Quarter. SGNI says
that the move should be managed in a manner which limits disruption to
public access to PRONI's unique holdings and which would be more
in-keeping with the experience of other national archives in moving
records. You can read more about this story here.
11th
January 2010
Space
Crisis at National Archives of Ireland
Following Fiona
Gartland's Irish Times article about the crisis of the lack of
storage at the National Archives (NAI), a letter appeared in the same
newspaper by well-known professional genealogist Paul Gorry and former
President of the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland
(APGI) setting out what needs to be done to secure the future of the
NAI.
In his letter
Gorry states "The crisis facing the National Archives [has been]
highlighted by Fiona Gartland.
"Frances McGee, archives keeper, is quoted as stating there is a
chronic lack of space and the warehouse to the rear of the current
premises is inadequate for long-term storage of documents.
"In 1922, during the Civil War, almost the entire contents of the
Public Record Office of Ireland were incinerated in the siege of the
Four Courts. This shameful act of cultural vandalism was perpetrated by
the founders of this State. Wittingly or unwittingly, they robbed us of
countless unique and irreplaceable records of our heritage.
"We are supposed to have learned our lesson after 1922, but it seems
that we have not. In lieu of a civil war, the Government proffers
"recession" as an excuse for endangering what has been accumulated in
the wake of 1922.
"The National Archives of Ireland has been starved of resources for
decades. Evidently the Government has a low opinion of our heritage.
Its current plan for the archive is to merge it into the National
Library. Far from promoting the interests of the National Archives,
such a move would reduce it to a component of the National Library's
manuscript department where it would compete with other departments for
even more limited funding.
"The National Library's dismantling of the Genealogical Office (a
"branch" of the Library, according to the legislation) should give some
indication of the fate of the National Archives in that scenario.
"The very idea that the National Archives could be absorbed into, or
even merge equally with, the National Library is an affront to what is
left of our heritage. Instead of this philistine approach, what the
National Archives needs is adequate funding, staffing and premises, the
re-appointment of the National Archives Advisory Council and, of
course, continued autonomy. Recessions come and go; the stain of
cultural vandalism is indelible."
5th
January 2010
Space
Crisis at National Archives of Ireland
Fiona Gartland, a
columnist with The IrishTimes, has highlighted
the ongoing problem of lack of space at the National Archives (NAI)
premises in Bishop Street, Dublin. She said that "Many state papers due
to become available to the public [this year] will not be accessible
because of storage problems at the National Archives". CIGO has
established that previous annual increments sent to NAI have already
been stored away in the warehouse to the rear of the main archives
building because of a lack of storage. This material too is
inaccessible. Even more worrying, the warehouse has problems with both
humidity control and its roof which might at any time let in rain
water. Gartland quotes archivist and deputy head of NAI Frances Magee
saying that "If paper is stored in good condition it will last a very
long time. It must not be too warm and relative humidity must be right;
it is very important that it is dry. It is very difficult to acheive
those conditions if the building is not purpose-built." CIGO knows well
that the warehouse is not purpose built, in fact it is a former biscuit
factory. Quite rightly Magee says further that "in the long term the
only solution is to provide new, purpose-built accommodation for the
State's archives somewhere in the city centre". Once again CIGO calls
on the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism to heed the call for better
premises for this unique national institution before disaster strikes
and we see a repeat of the fire of 1922 which destroyed the contents of
the Public Record Office of Ireland.
|