Go online to find your ancestors ... or Amy’s

AMATEUR genealogists are able to see their ancestors' handwriting as the 1911 Census goes online today.

Census forms detailing the lives of 36 million people in England and Wales have been scanned and posted on an ancestry website where you can trace the history of your family and the house you live in.

Among those whose personal data was collected were then Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and Bloomsbury set author Virginia Woolf. The ancestors of David Beckham and Amy Winehouse are also there.

Researchers have also discovered the census record for the royal family, showing King George V and including four pages of household staff.

The 1911 Census is the oldest from which the original forms were kept and the first to record full details of British Army personnel stationed overseas. It covered England and Wales, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, plus Royal Naval and Merchant Navy personnel who were on their vessels.

Eighty per cent of the available records from England have been uploaded and the remainder will go online in coming months.

The 1911 Census was the first to ask women how long they had been married and how many children they had. The records were made available by the National Archives after a ruling by the information commissioner. Some sensitive details, such as names of children born in prison, are not included.

The documents have been digitised by the findmypast.com website and are available for a fee at www.1911census.co.uk.

Records show that Beckham's great-great-great grandfather, John Beckham, born in 1846, was employed by a council as a scavenger, while his great-great grandfather William Beckham, born 1870, was working as a cart or van driver. William lived with his wife Harriet and seven children in a house in Walworth, south London, at the time of the census.

His eldest daughter Martha, 19, was working as an artificial florist and his second eldest, Mary, was employed as a dressmaker. Two of the 10 children born to William and Harriet had died by 1911. Winehouse's background is similarly lacking in grandeur. Like many European Jews, her maternal ancestors emigrated from Russia to London in the 19th century and were living in Spitalfields, east London, in 1911. Abraham Grandish, born 1855, worked as a hawker selling fruit while his daughter Fanny, born 1895, was employed as a waterproofer. Her four younger siblings all attended school and a sixth child had died.

The website's commercial director Elaine Collins said: "The 1911 census offers a crucial new entry point to family history research for novice historians to seasoned genealogists.These records shed more light on our ancestors' day-to-day lifestyles, providing a snapshot of a day in their lives, with details of their occupations, housing arrangements and social status." Oliver Morley, director of business development at the National Archives, said: "This remarkable record is available online to researchers and family historians all over the world for future generations."