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Without doubt the Essex records online is a big step forward for people,it is a pity so few other counties have followed suit,the numbers from Essex are impressive,if I remember they started it in the May and had the total cost of doing it back by the November,and the photos of the early records are so much better than the micro fiche we had before,it was giant step forward,I would like the ERO to fall in line with other record offices about records within the 100 year rule at the moment if you want to look at a school record from 1920 you cannot, if you use Cambridgeshire records all you do is sign a document saying it is for your own use and is for you family history.

Hi well if you google Essex Records Chelmsford their web site explains things,but the cost is £10 for 24 hrs and £20 for 7 days, the web site is SEAX,i thought you might be some distance away,as I say before it was possible to access the parish records on line I used to do look ups at the record office,now well people like yourself can look the records up,you can download the images,it is best if you know where you want to look for records,get a map of Essex so if you look at a parish and find nothing then you will know the nearest other parishes to look up,it will not take you long to work out that some of the parish records have deaths,bap,and marriages in so there might be 120 images but by looking at whats in the records you know that you need to go to at least the 70th image before you get to marriages,I am sure you will work it out.

Hi as you have the date you might get the whole report in the Essex Chronicle,but these are not held at ERO but at Chelmsford Library,never understood why,still with a date it should take about 30 mins to find a report if there is one.

Yes people did change their middle name,well I have found it to be so,your find of the policeman would seem to be the right man ,Wiffen is a Essex name,and to find one born in the Channel Islands at the right year would for me anyway make it a entry into the tree with a explaination as to why,of course the police records would have all his personal data,if they have survived,and his brother Albert could have married in 1912 in the registration area of Rochford,but you would need to buy a cert or just maybe you could find that marriage in the Essex records on line,assume it was one of the churches in Southend and Westcliff not many lol to choose from,you use the word concrete in your posting,there are many times when you cannot have concrete proof,you just have to enter it and attach a note of what your thinking is for it to be included,maybe later you will find you are right or wrong

No there are lots of records that are time restricted,Hospital,School,Prison and many others,many people do not come across this because our hobby is finding dead people and for many they have their family history going back to before the 1911 census and so research in School records is not one of their aims many people are researching lots of names/lines and so cannot fill in little bits like when a ancestor left one school and went to another ,but in my case it has led me from believing my father was living at Ingatestone ,but he arrived there from Newton Cambridgeshire and before that from Lindfield Sussex all this from School records,I wonder how the London Records are dealing with it they used to have lots of inner London school records that were available because I used them about 4 years ago,I am of the opinion that we should allow census records from 70 years ago,the USA allow records from the 1930's.