The 1871 census is available online, in full, for the first time. Thanks to a new initiative by The National Archives and Ancestry.co.uk, you can search the index by name and look at scans of original records of the famous, and not so famous. This latest launch means visitors to the National Archives website will now be able to trace their families through four successive censuses, 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901. Searching the index is free