1939 Register - parish identification

[Nick_Ips]

One of the great mysteries when the 1939 Register first came out was how to identify the parish, or at least a more precise location than R.D. level. This was of particular interest to people doing one place studies.

Some pages from the register do give a parish (or place) name, but many don't, even where they have specific street names and house numbers.

I've just been doing a search online to see if any progress has been made on making it easier to identify the parish/place a given register entry relates to, but cannot find anything other than suggested techniques to use other bits of information to get an implied parish/place.

Has anyone found (or contemplated building) a database or index to allow quick conversion of a TNA reference number to a parish name - for example RG101/6577J being part of Hickling in Norfolk, or that RG101/6634A includes both the parishes of Falkenham and Kirton in Suffolk?

I remember in the early days there being some concern about 'finding aids' being used to locate information without paying the per-page cost - is this the reason why nobody has built an index of place names?

[KGarrad]

The 1939 National Register doesn't use parishes, or Registration Districts!
Rather it is based on councils Borough Councils, Urban Boroughs, Metroploitan Boroughs, Urban District Councils and Rural District Councils.

A list is available on FindMyPast.
Click on Advanced Search, then click on "Browse Borough/District", and a filter will appear.

See: http://www.findmypast.co.uk/articles/1939-register-enumeration-districts

[Mean_genie]

Unfortunately it is very hard to identify small villages and hamlets in 1939 because the books with the boundary and area descriptions (the equivalent of the Enumerators' Summary Books in 1911) haven't survived. So the people best placed to create a finding aid at this level will be people with local knowledge, such as local history groups and One-Place studies.

[chris_49]

The map that appears (scroll down) when you get the transcription page can be helpful. Sometimes they get it wrong, and sometimes they give up and display the named town of the rural district, but often I've found it useful (if you're not sure check, say, farm names on the map against entries on the original).

Perhaps I've been lucky, but then my expectations weren't high!

[Nick_Ips]

Perhaps some clarification of terminology is needed 

The header of each register page refers to "Registration District and Sub-district" which is usually completed with two numbers separated by a dash or slash. There is a mapping between this 'Registration district' number and each borough/council (in modern parlance described as 'unit of local government').

So for example Smallburgh Rural District seems to map to 'Registration district/sub-district' 221/1 and 221/2. I've not seen any records for 221/1 or 221/2 which are not in Smallburgh RD, and nothing for Smallburgh RD which is not in 221/1 or 221/2. Yet 

So having found someone on the 1939 Register you could say they were living in Smallburgh RD, or possibly 'Registration district/sub-district' 221/1, which is the more precise location (being the smallest unit systematically recorded on the page). Calling it a Registration District might be confusing, but that it what it says on the original document 

As Mean_genie points out, there is a structure to the data below that level - people's names weren't just added to the Register in random order. The 1931 (and 1941?) census structure was apparently the primary basis.

Anecdotally, at least in rural areas, there is a mapping between register books (identified by a TNA Piece number) and individual parishes. Often one parish will be in one book, some larger parishes have two or more books, occasionally some books contain more than one (generally small) parish.

And that led to my question - has anyone attempted to build a database which gives the information like parish 'X' is in TNA piece "1234A" or TNA Piece "5678B" includes parish 'z'?

Chris, I was going to mention the FindMyPast maps in my original post. Sometimes they are very accurate which suggests somewhere at FindMyPast there is more detailed data that isn't displayed as part of each record. But as you say, other times the map just displays a general area. Where the original page doesn't give a placename I have used the online maps to work it out - but that doesn't work in reverse - for example if you want to find the Smith family who lived in Hickling.

The local history groups and one-place studies have probably found much of this information out already, and I suspect many other people have similarly found the correct parish/place name(s) for each piece. But what I haven't seen is any attempt to bring that information together in the form of an index similar to the way street indexes were produced before the census records were digitised and electronically searchable.

[vrvt]

I had a similar question and asked about it here: Determining the area covered by an Enumeration District (ED) on the 1939 Register?

It still isn't completely answered so I look forward to seeing other suggestions people may have. Fortunately with more entries being opened there are more addresses visible in the left hand column, which makes it a bit easier to determine the location.

As far as I am aware, the Registration district and subdistrict are the same as those used for civil registration and census purposes, however subdistricts could be spread over multiple enumeration districts. Rural districts were not the same as Registration districts, though they often shared names. You can take a look at Vision of Britain to get an idea of how complex these geographies were.

[Nick_Ips]

Thanks Harry, your post last year was one of the things I read yesterday as part of my research - but the link you put to the 1931 census reports no longer seems to work?

I'm a bit puzzled why more people aren't asking about this - when I find somebody on a census I add a note in my family history program that person 'x' at that time was living in place 'y'. I know not everyone is interested in the 'where's, but I find it a little strange that people are either happy to just know the rough area (borough/district) someone lived, or do the extra work each time to work out the town/parish/hamlet.

As for the left-hand column, I really don't understand why any of it is redacted. Although there are occasional notes in red or green ink in that column, if the remainder of the line is redacted then it is meaningless as 'personal' information. The same goes for the schedule numbers. Redacting columns 1 to 3 just makes it very difficult to verify information, and goes against the basic principle of attempting to verify information from the original source. 

[Mean_genie]

The 1931 census divisions were used as the basis for the 1939 Register, with adjustments to reflect changes in population distribution since then. This was the normal practice when planning a new census, and the 1941 census would have used the same divisions (albeit with larger enumeration districts than those in the Register). As in a census, the administration was carried out by Registrars and Superintendent Registrars, but because National Registration and rationing were going to be carried out by local government, the final boundaries were based on Boroughs or Urban and Rural Districts which could be different in some cases.

[vrvt]

Thanks Harry, your post last year was one of the things I read yesterday as part of my research - but the link you put to the 1931 census reports no longer seems to work?

The Histpop website is very temperamental. Some days it works and some days it doesn't, I'm not quite sure why. It was working 2 days ago, so should be back at some point if you keep checking.