Birdsey, William Butler

When COFEPOW was first started in November 1997, Carol Cooper (Founder of COFEPOW) came to an agreement with the National Archives.

Permission was given to photograph the first page only of the Liberation Questionnaires and we could use these photographs on the COFEPOW website on the understanding that we didn’t accept any payment for viewing them.

Volunteers spent many hours travelling to and from London (at their own expense) to photograph the Questionnaires and send them, on discs, to the Webmaster. These discs were, in turn, sent out to more volunteers who painstakingly went through each disc re-naming each photograph. What we have on the COFEPOW website has taken many years and a lot of time and hard work by many volunteers.

Now Ancestry has taken all the Liberation Questionnaire pages re-formatted them and put them on their website where they can be accessed but only if you pay the appropriate fee.

It is appreciated that the Liberation Questionnaires on Ancestry are more comprehensive than that on the COFEPOW website but time moves on and COFEPOW is still bound by the original agreement.