"Access the Birth, Marriage and Death Index for nothing"

[MaryA]

I think you are probably right, the scans are those which FreeBMD have available, even if they haven't yet transcribed them and they admit they don't have a complete set yet, but add to their stock as and when funds are available to do so.

Since there are more available than are transcribed, albeit incomplete, at least it's a little way further ahead than we were before and if you are careful and take note of the quarters/years and pages checked it will cut down on those needed to be paid for in 1837online.

I was listening to Radio 2 two days ago, shortly before 5.00pm there is a slot called "Miles Mendoza's Website of the Day" and this particular day he was promoting family history - surprise surprise!

His commented that "Ancestry.co.uk are the only site with the complete Births, Marriages and Death index between 1837 and the present day"

Shows they don't research very well doesn't it?

Mary

[Ringrose]

Have been looking at pages for 10 mins. Some are so black and blurred that you cannot read them and the I had"Error processing image "" came up[. Possibly a lot of us are eagerly looking for our ancestors that the ssite cannoy cope.

Ringrose

[PaulineJ]

Great news -saves all those journeys on the tube. BUT when I looked this morning I did find a few errors---I was looking up Ringrose in various years and sometimes the page came up with surnames beginning with a different letter

Ringrose

My interpretation is that either the 'indexer' has misread a "J" as a "T" for example,
Tubb instead of Jubb
or that
John E Smith at the start of the page is listed as John Esmith.

I'm sure that the index will improve as time goes on. The other thing to watch out for though is out-of-alphabetical order entries. The elusive ones may still be in there, so scroll through.

Pauline

Pauline

[GeoffP]

Does anybody have problems with the time to download the images. I don't have broadband but earlier today I had to give up. 1837 is much faster.
                                                 Geoff

[Ringrose]

Yes it does seem slow and as I mentioned earlier I cannot get images at all at the moment . I mannaged to do 2 years .

Ringrose

[Tati]

  Images load much faster for me than on FreeBMD!!
I'm on 20+Mega broadband too 

Tanja 
 

[moh]

The hand written details on the new BMD on Ancestry are useless - they cannot be read - so much for making them free.

[Llwyd]

Hi there,

I've registered some time ago with Ancestry, but not paid them any money.I've received the e mail today and have been searching all afternoon.

I've found it faster and better than 1837 online as I've found a great -uncle who I could not locate on 1837 and of course.......it's free  

However,there is still one great-aunt I cannot find,but as the facility is free there's no problem with checking and re-checking.

So far so good and no complaints.

[fordy]

Nice!! 

It's going to put a few other sites out of business!

Mary

And when this happens - Ancestry will have taken over the Genealogical world.
Is this good for researchers in the long run?

Once all the competition has gone -  how much for a subscription?  I doubt if many of us will be smiling so readily for long.

A monopoly is never good for the consumer.

Ancestry (a non- British company) should not be allowed rights so readily to British data records and the Government/National Archives should put something in place to safe-guard enough competition for prices to be kept competitive.

I get the feeling that the N/A are grabbing as much money as quick as they can without looking to the future.

David.