In the world of genealogy you will come across some rules and regulations and one of these is the 100-year rule. You may be as confused as other people about this rule but to what does it apply?
The hundred year rule simply implies that certain pieces of information about a person that may contain information of a private matter like medical problems will remain strictly confidential for a minimum duration of one hundred years. This rule is generally used in areas of interest such as genealogy where information is researched about certain past relatives that were alive in the past hundred years.
Not everyone is even aware that such a rule exists but will eventually come across it as they delve into their family tree. It can be regarded as a major hindurance when you are desperately trying to find find more information about a certain past relative.
One of the areas that the rule applies to are the UK census records. These records are conducted every ten years in the UK and they contain a lot of information about the general public, some of the information collected can contain some very personal medical problems of a member of the family which is regarded as private and confidential. This is the result of the data protection act which is frequently updated, and it is strictly applied to medical records.
A person’s privacy rights were just as important as anyone else but the census is giving details of a persons address, where they were born their occupation and marital status. The early census were made public after about 60 years but there was no real set law to govern the rule. Some people argued the fact that people do not necessarily live in a house for 50 or 60 years. A person may have lived in several addresses from the time they are born until their older years,
But the 100 year rule does not affect other records like birth, marriage and death records. These are readily available because they are only stating when and where certain individuals were born or married and displaying names of other family members.You can easily obtain a birth certificate of someone born only 20 or 30 years ago, the same applies to marriage and death certificates.
The Hundred Year Rule was First Suggested
In 1966 the lord chancellor stated that all census information would have to wait for a 100-year span before it was made public., but apparently there was no legal backing from the government at the time but the rule has remained and has been applied to the release of census information.
Many people in in certain professions that relied on the release of the census information earlier that the one hundred year time limit have protested that the time length was loo long. None have felt this disappointment more that people in the field of genealogy that rely on the census information to continue their research.
The Hundred Year Rule Impact On 2021 census
Just to give you an idea how this rule will affect the 2021 census which will be due in March, all households and other residential establishments will receive their enumeration papers to fill out with their family information and then sent back to the government census offices.
The information that is put on this census document will remain strictly private for the next one hundred years, this means that it will not be available for general release until 2121. You can rest assured that any confidential material about yourself for example will not be exposed until then, by which time most of the population alive today will be either dead and buried or very old, at least in their hundreds.
People Are Living longer
It is generally believed that the hundred year rule has been influanced by the actual life span that people are now living, reaching the grand old age of 100 is now on the increase. People are now living up to and some beyond the one hundred year mark, so you can understand how that decision can effect the ruling.
A lot of people are debating that waiting even 60 or 70 years is a long time for a census to be released but 100 years is being excessive. But the Government has its reasons and it was pointed out that even our great grand-parents may have had committed an illegal act and the result that when the census was taken at the time they may have been in prison.
They could have jeopardised national security or done have other criminal acts that would bring embarrassment and disgrace to other members of the family if it was discovered in an early census release.
Waiting a good 60 to 70 years would alleviate some past misdemeanors and it would have been classed as past history. Some of the people involved and affected by the actions may be dead by now or just shrugged it off as it happened a long time ago and can’t remember it exactly how it happened. As older people may succumb to elderly afflictions like dementia and Alzheimer there is less chance of these past criminal acts are remembered.
After a 100-year wait the only people that will come across this information will be the great grand- children of the people involved and the curiosity of learning about their ancestry. Maybe it will be classed as a skeleton in the cupboard type of story that is carried on through the family and by the time it reaches the modern generation at the time it will be looked at as just a rumor or a story made up by old wives tales.
The Hundred Year Rule Becomes Law
In 2005 the actual 100-year rule was officially enforced, and rules were set by the freedom of information act of 200 that if any information was released before that time then criminal proceedings could be enforced.
It is unfortunate that this ruling was enforced before the 1911 census was due to be released as it may have been released a few years earlier. But when it was released it was one of the greatest breakthroughs for genealogy research
The 1921 census has now been scheduled to be released to the public in 2022, although there has been hopes that it can be released earlier. Until now there seems no hope that there will be an earlier release so we have to bide our time until the year 2022 .
There is one way to look at the 100-year ruling, providing that after the 1921 release the other census release for the following decades will follow nice and smoothly. Future generations will have a much larger store of data and research references than we have today and family tree craze will probably be more wide spread.
.
Your Family past 