The live talk was followed by a recording the following morning. Linda was not present at the Recording.
Members there is a Handout for this talk in the 'Kent FHS Event Handout Archive' under KFHS Resources in the Members Area
This was an extremely enlightening talk, which attracted much praise from members attending both the Live, and the Recorded sessions.
Linda started her talk by explaining that although the 1939 National Register was similar to a census, undertaken by the Census office, in the same way as a census using enumerators etc., it was not actually a census. However, as there is no extant census after 1921 the 1939 Register can be a very helpful tool as it gives similar information to the census. The 1931 census was lost in a fire, no census was taken in 1941 due to the war, and the 1951 census will not be released until 2051.
Why was it taken? At the outbreak of World War II, the Government needed to know facts about the population. Initially to supply Identity Cards and Ration Books, plus regulating conscripts and managing the workforce.
The National Register Act 1939 was passed within days of the outbreak of war and the information recorded as on the night of the 29th September 1939. The information to be supplied by the civilian population, every man woman and child, was: name, address, gender, marital status, occupation, date of birth etc. Occupations were required as some jobs would be classed as war work making the person exempt from military service. Also, details were required about people already in war work such as ARP wardens. Data for those in the Military, Merchant Navy and civilians on military bases were to be taken by Military authorities and are not included in the 1939 National Register unless they were at home on leave overnight on 29th September.
Coverage: details of 31 million people living in England, Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland were recorded. But the register did not cover those living in the Channel Islands, nor the Isle of Man. The registers for Scotland and Northern Ireland are not available online but are available by application to their National Records offices. The registers for England and Wales maybe viewed at The National Archives or online with a subscription to such pay to view sites as: Findmypast, Ancestry, My Heritage, The Genealogist. Linda demonstrated, with slides, searching the register via these sites.
Linda suggested narrowing down a common name by entering a birthday and month, leaving out the year, especially if a name does not come up in the name search as it may have been recorded or transcribed incorrectly. She advised leaving off the year as she has found several birth errors to birth years. Possibly recorded wrongly by the enumerator, or incorrectly given to the enumerator, either in error, or intentionally by people trying to hide their ages.
You can also search an area using the district codes which can be found listed on the sites with the 1939 register. The district codes can be particularly useful to browse a small town or village. District codes were comprised of three alphabet letters and whilst some look as if they stand for a place such as LIV for Liverpool this is not so as they were all randomly generated.
National Registration numbers are made up from the enumerator district, the schedule number and the person’s number in the household. Hence if you have the person’s Identity Card, Ration Book or NHS card number these numbers will have been formed using the National Register number and may be used in a search of the register. Numbers on the Identity Cards became part of a person’s NHS card number from when it was founded in 1948.
Having found an entry, unless blacked out with the text ‘This record is officially closed’ you will see entries in all of the columns on the left-hand page but only part of the page on the right, containing additional information and clarifications to columns on the left page, war work, etc. Linda said the remainder of the page not revealed, holds details entered by government departments, especially to do with the founding of the NHS in 1948. Hence most of the codes you find on the left side page of the register are linked to columns on the hidden part of the page on the right. The hidden columns are only used by civil servants and are never open for public viewing.
Blacked out or redacted entries ‘This record is officially closed’ were due to data protection, as the person may still have been alive in 2015 when the register was released. Linda said if you know some details about members of a family and look for loops in handwriting above and below the blacked-out line you may be able to make an educated guess about the family member you are looking for. The redacted entries are opened up after a death has been registered. But not immediately, it may take a year or so after the event as they are usually dealt with in batches. If you find an entry still closed after a death you can request for it to be opened. Or if you know a person is still alive and the entry should be redacted you can apply for it to be closed using the link on Findmypast. But you can’t report errors for correction to the original entries in the register.
Having found an entry you are searching for you may see on that some entries on the page have annotations in a coded form in different coloured ink to the original register entry. There is only one copy of the National register but there was no standard list of codes and abbreviations, nor colours of ink to be used by civil servants when annotating an entry. Hence, Linda showed a list of codes appearing quite regularly in the register and their most likely meaning.
NR = National Register
CR = Central Register … after 1952 formation of NHS
I/C r IC = Identity Card
½ M/C = Medical Card …. likely meaning a medical was produced – possibly when changing GPs.
OVSPI …. mainly in Column 5 for Institution use (Officer, Visitor, Servant, Patient, Inmate)
Column 11 on the right-hand page
ARP = Air Raid Warden
PWC = Post War Credits
FA = Family Allowance
Linda gave many other examples for Column 11.
A Surname crossed out for a female with another name(s) above and M suggests a marriage. This can be checked and confirmed against Marriage Registers. But beware of the date shown on the National Register as this is not the date of the marriage but the date the annotation was made as is likely the case when any date has been added to the register. The likelihood being it’s the date the register was updated, not the date the event took place.
Linda continued by showing extracts from the National Register giving examples of the codes listed above and educated guesses of others supported against entries in official documents. She even found a Surname crossed out with another over the top and noted ‘London Feb 45 Gaz’ which she guessed was the February 1945 issue of the London Gazette and sure enough a search of the London Gazette online revealed an official announcement of a name change with the added bonus of a child who had not been born in 1939 and so was not on the National Register.
Linda will be sending a handout about this talk to our Zoom Team which will be circulated to all those who attended the talk and the recording, in due course.
Linda gave her contact details where more information may be found:
Web: www.LindaHammondResearch.com
Facebook: Linda Hammond Research
Email: lindahammondresearch@orange.fr
Report by: Tricia Baxter