The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 49 No.4 | March 2023

Local Group Programmes

Contact: Margaret on 07824 779037 E-mail: andover@hgs-online.org.uk

Andover Meetings are normally held on the second Thursday, September to July, commencing 7.30p.m. at The Fairground Hall, Weyhill, Andover SP11 0QN

(November) The 1939 Register – Peter de Dulin Unlike all the population censuses taken before and since, the 1939 Register was in fact a working document that was used up until the 1990s. There had been a previous 1915 Register but this was destroyed after the 1921 census was taken. Because the 1941 census was not taken in WWII and the 1931 census was destroyed due to fire and water damage in WWII, the 1939 Register remains a very important source of population information for that extended period. The Register was compiled on the night of 29th September 1939, but only for England and Wales. The Register lists all civilians, foreign visitors, people in institutions, evacuees and military personnel on leave, but not those in military bases. The main purpose of the Register was to produce national ID cards and to help with ration books and conscription. Birthplace and people’s relationships within households were not recorded, but their date of birth and precise occupation were and this was used to assess what skills were available in the struggle ahead. Regions were given codes, so Andover was EEC. With an additional fourth or fifth letter, this created the ED – or Enumeration District – code. Together with codes for households and individuals, this formed a unique reference that was used on other documents. The Register can be searched and viewed through the familiar Find My Past and Ancestry subscriptions. Images and transcripts are available and updated periodically. Some of the individual records cannot be viewed due to the ‘100 year rule’ and redacted information will have a black bar through it. So records of people still alive, and who were recorded in the Register, cannot yet be viewed. There will be other reasons why some records cannot be found and these include not being in England or Wales at the time; individuals living apart from their families; a change of name or a change of street name. Sometimes poor handwriting means transcriptions are incorrect. We learned that the Register was updated over time. Most changes were to do with the changing marital status of single women. When they married, their maiden name in the Register was overwritten by their marital name. However, the ‘single or married’ status box was not changed which can lead to confusion. So, the original list of people living in households potentially sharing a common name has therefore changed dramatically and can make searching tricky. Many other alterations were made over the years but there is no master index of the annotations and notes employed. All changes were made on one master copy that would be maintained at a local area office. The Register was used by the NHS up until the 1990s.

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