1939.....amazing what you cannot find

[Ringrose]

My aunt and uncle were married in 1935 and as I couldn't find them in the usual search way I put in the road .....I found that their house had been blocked.Uncle died in the fifties and my aunt in the seventies.A few others missing too.
How was this register taken....did people send in their record or was it a house to house record.If the latter I can understand why some are missing.
Ringrose

[stanmapstone]

Registration was carried out the same way as a census. A schedule was left and later collected by an enumerator.

Stan

[stanmapstone]

You can see a copy of the household schedule at http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/national-registration-day-29-september-1939/

Stan

[ScouseBoy]

Registration was carried out the same way as a census. A schedule was left and later collected by an enumerator.

Stan

    Just like a census, there are efficient enumerators as well as enumerators lacking in precision and accuracy.
Some properties could have accidentally been omitted.

[Helina]

Yes, I have found the same problem with several of my deceased relations

helina

[coombs]

Several entries have a ?? after the first name, or before the surname or even overall. I have a few rellies who seemed to be a 1939 register dodger.

[CarolA3]

Several entries have a ?? after the first name, or before the surname or even overall. I have a few rellies who seemed to be a 1939 register dodger

?? or similar marks are only seen in the transcriptions when the handwriting is unclear.  They're not seen in the original images.  Personally I'd rather have an honest ?? than a wild guess

As for 'dodging' the register, that would leave the dodger with no identity card and no access to rations!  I wonder how many people were able to keep that up for 13 years (1939-1952)

Carol

[mike175]

I'm not really complaining because I've found masses of useful information from the 1939 Register. However it does give the impression of being transcribed in rather a hurry. There are many perfectly clear originals that have been mangled in transcription, and many obvious careless mistakes like changing the sex of the person or grabbing some details from another line on the sheet.

I haven't yet tried submitting corrections, but I will do in due course when things settle down a bit. I think they must be experiencing a big jump in the number of people online at the moment.

Mike.

[CarolA3]

................ many obvious careless mistakes like changing the sex of the person or grabbing some details from another line on the sheet.

I haven't yet tried submitting corrections, but I will do in due course when things settle down a bit.

Hi Mike

There are one or two other threads where the transcribing process has been explained.  Because of possible privacy issues, the transcribers weren't given entire pages to work on as you'd expect with a census, for example.  Instead they were each given a column, so one had the names, another had dates of birth etc.  When the transcribed entries were 'reassembled' some data inevitably became misaligned.

I'm submitting corrections as soon as they turn up (otherwise I'd forget where they were!) and I'm confident that they'll be looked at as soon as possible.

Carol