When you think about it, in the late Victorian/early Edwardian period, officialdom or the state very rarely interacted with most individuals. No social security, no state pensions, no income tax (until the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1913 only those earning more than £150 a year were considered for taxation), only males who owned property or paid rent over 10s were able to vote, no national health service, no passports. For many, all you had to do was to show your parish of birth, and by 1900 in the larger conurbations, the poor law idea of removing a person back to his or her rural parish of birth had ceased. On that basis why did anyone in authority need to know with any precision who your parents were? It was really only in matters of inheritance that it might be necessary to have documentary proof of your antecedents. Of course much of that changed with the First World War.
