<![endif]>1939Register Special Newsletter
updated 16thFebruary 2016 4.30pm
What wasthe 1939 Register?
How the register differs from other censuses
Why some names are crossed out &other mysteries
Why are there more transcription errorsthan usual?
How to search the 1939 Register
Pitfalls to avoid whensearching by address?
What's the difference between lockedand closed
Closed records are NOT indexed
How to work out who the hidden peoplewere
Who should we be looking for, and why?
What aren't we seeing?
Additional articles that you may find of interest
Extending your tree beyond 1911 usingthe 1939 Register
How evacuation was planned in 1939
Storm clouds on the horizon
Qualifications desirable in anenumerator
Operation Pied Piper
A little bitof history
More tips
Note: if you find this guide useful you can support my work by using the links below to go to the Findmypast site of your choice:
What wasthe 1939 Register?
Sylvanus Percival Vivian, RegistrarGeneral for England &Wales between 1921-45, wasthe driving force behind the creating of the 1939 National Register. Havingorganised the 1921 and 1931 Censuses, and having written critically about the1915 National Register he recognised that infrastructure for the 1941 Censuscould be used to create a National Register, should war break out. Hispreparations for the 1941 census were, therefore, intertwined with theplanning of a national registration system for the purposes of conscription,which began at least as early as 1935.
However the National Register wasn'tcreated simply as a means of identifying fit young men who could be sent abroadto die for their country - the Great War had demonstrated how important it wasto effectively marshall resources on the Home Front, and sometimes you'll find out what people did during the war. For example, I discovered that before my father joined up he was an ARP stretcher-bearer.
Although the 1939 National Register covered the whole of the United Kingdom, the National Archives only holds the registers for England & Wales - so you won't find anyone who was in Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, or the Channel Islands at the time.
How the register differs from othercensuses
We're used to censuses that aspire to recordeveryone in the land - but that wasn't what happened in 1939.
A key task of the enumerators whocollected the data was to issue identity cards - and for this reason militarypersonnel and government workers who already had ID cards are unlikely to berecorded in Register. According to the National Archives (TNA) researchguide:
TheRegister was not meant to record members of the armed forces and the records donot feature:
- British Army barracks
- Royal Navy stations
- Royal Air Force stations
- members of the armed forces billeted in homes, including their own homes
However,the records do include:
- members of the armed forces on leave
- civilians on military bases
Other key differences compared to thecensuses are that relationships are not shown, middle names are rarely shown infull, and places of birth are not listed. However, precise dates of birth aregiven, and this information might well save us the cost of buying a birthcertificate, especially for our more distant relatives.
Tip:birthdates are not always recorded correctly - I have two great-auntswho were twins, but if you relied on what the enumerators wrote down (they weredifferent enumerators because both of the sisters had married before 1939) youwould think they had been born a month apart. I've no idea whether the mistakewas made by the husband or the enumerator - but it certainly wasn't thetranscriber.
Why some names are crossed out &other mysteries
The 1939 Register was a working document- unlike censuses, which were checked, analysed, and archived, the NationalRegister was updated as changes occurred. For example, if a woman married she wouldnormally adopt her husband's surname - and if this occurred after 29thSeptember 1939 a new identity card had to be issued.
Tip:the use of identity cards didn't end when the war was over - they continued inuse until 1952.
When the National Health Service wasfounded in 1948 the National Register was used as the basis of the NHS CentralRegister, and this continued in to the early 1990s. As a result many namechanges were recorded as the result of marriages (and divorces) that took placein the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. There may even be some later changes - but Ihaven't seen any yet.
Here's an example of a name change onmarriage:
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© Crown Copyright Image reproduced bycourtesy of The National Archives, London, England and Findmypast
This tells us that May E Lawson becameDalrymple on her first marriage (which was in 1951), and Noon on her secondmarriage in 1955. She died in 1985, but the record would be open in any case asshe was born in 1904, which is more than 100 years ago.
Changes weren't made immediately -there was usually a delay - and in the example above you can see the change ofname to Dalrymple seems not to have been recorded until early 1955, by whichtime Mrs Dalrymple (nee Lawson) was well on her way to marrying again - shemarried Frederick E Noon in the third quarter of that year.
This means that where a date is shownall you can conclude is that the event must have happened prior to that date.You are NOT seeing the date on which the person married or divorced.
Tip: information in the same colour ink and handwriting is likely tohave been entered at the same time - without this clue I might have associatedthe 1955 date with the second marriage.
If there is a change of surnamerecorded you can usually search using either surname. Unusually May E Noon hasonly been indexed under her final surname, possibly because it's really hard toread her original surname (Lawson). But you're more likely to see a searchresult that looks like this one:
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That's my mum! Note that the original surname- the maiden surname in this case - is shown in parentheses.
Why are there more transcription errorsthan usual?
If you're used to just typing in namesand seeing results pop-up you might be frustrated by the number oftranscription errors. Fortunately it's unlikely that they'll prevent youfinding the right records because there are so many different ways of searching- and anyway, most transcription errors can be overcome by the judicious use ofwildcards. But it's important to understand just why there are more errors than usual.
First of all, there was a war on - theenumerators don't seem to have been as careful with their handwriting as onewould have liked. The fact that they were using fountain pens probably didn'thelp - there tends to be too much ink, so that some of the details disappears into a blob. And the transcribers have had to try to interpret names that have been crossed through - as if their task wasn't already challenging enough!
However the biggest challenge for thetranscribers was the result of privacy concerns - these records were not due tobe opened until 2040, by which time everyone recorded would have been over 100years old. This is why we could initially only see records for people who wereborn over 100 years ago, or whose death had been recorded in the register (someother records have since been opened up for people who are known to have died).
This meant that the transcribersweren't given an entire page to work with - instead the page was divided intocolumns of data. No one transcriber would have an entire entry for anindividual, making it much more difficult to interpret what they could see.
I'm never one to criticise transcribersbecause it's not a job I would want to do, even though (and, perhaps, because)I'd be very good at it - but in this instance the challenges were greater thanusual, and we have to remember that what we see isn't what they saw.
How to search the 1939 Register
Fortunately, despite the transcriptionerrors, the chances of picking the wrong household in 1939 are extremely low,partly because you're much more likely to know the date of birth of a parent orgrandparent (and the chances of there being two people with exactly the samename born on precisely the same day are pretty low), but also because beforeyou use any of your precious credits you'll get to see a preview that lookssomething like this:
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There are two ways to search - you cansearch for a person, or you can search for an address. But most of the timeyou'll want to search for a person, because you can include locationinformation a person search if you want:
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As you can see, the Search page looksvery similar to the page we see when we search the 1911 Census at Findmypast,but with the addition of the Birthday field. All of the fields are optional,even the name - so you can start with a very broad search and narrow down byadding more information.
Tip: less is more when it comes tosearching - the less information you enter on the Search form, the more resultsyou'll get! Should you get too many results you can always add more informationand tryagain.
Note that there are boxes on the formfor the National Archives references - the piece number, and the item number. Isuggest you record these for the households you purchase as they'll provide aquick way of finding the record again. And who knows, perhaps one day we'll addthe 1939 Register to the list of censuses supported by LostCousins?
When you search by address there arefar fewer boxes on the form:
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I suspect that the address search willbe used mainly by people who want to find out who was living in 'their' housein 1939, or who want to find out information about their neighbours. If I havesome credits left over I'm certainly going to look at the house where I grew up- all the neighbours must be well over 100 by now (some of them seemed it atthe time, though I expect they were younger than I am now!).
For more information about searchingplease check out the Findmypastblog(you don't need to be a current subscriber).
Pitfalls to avoid when searching byaddress
Searching by address sounds simple, butthere are some complicating factors that you need to be aware of:
- Postal addresses can be a misleading guide to the Borough/District - for example, I grew up in Chadwell Heath, Romford as far as the postman was concerned but we were in the adjoining borough of Ilford for the purposes of voting and rates. I didn't find this out until very recently (when we lived there I was far too young to vote).
- There might be more than one street in a borough with the same name - this is most likely to be a problem with names like Station Road, or London Road.
- Some address information was omitted when the records launched last November, and whilst this has been rectified in many cases, the problem might persist. When you search for a street you can view a list of all the houses that have been indexed - even if there is a gap in the numbering it's likely that the occupants of those properties can still be found by name.
What's the difference between lockedand closed
Lockedhouseholds are households you haven'tviewed before; unlocking a household allows you to see the open records in thathousehold.
Closed records exist in both locked and unlocked households- they are records that you can't see because the person is recorded as havingbeen born less than 100 years ago, and their death has not been confirmed.Closed records can usually be opened by submitting a death certificate, but youneed to know where the individual was living in 1939.
Closed records are NOT indexed
If a record is closed then you won'tfind that person in the index, no matter how you search. For example, when theregister first launched in November my mother was not in the index, and becauseshe had been evacuated I didn't know where she was living.
Fortunately Findmypast opened an additional2.5 million records in December, having used a sophisticated algorithm to matchdeath index entries against register entries - this was possible because thedeath indexes from 1969 onwards include the individual's date of birth.
There are still many records which areclosed, even though the person is now deceased - unfortunately the NationalArchives, who hold the registers, and have ultimate responsibility for decidingwhich records can be opened, have to take a conservative approach to avoidbreaching the privacy of living people.
However if you can work out wheresomeone was living, and have their death certificate, it will usualy be possible to open the record. At launch about 28 million records were open, out of 41 million - now there are 30.6 million open records, andthousands more are opened every week.
How to work out who the hidden peoplewere
When you view the handwritten images yousee an entire page - other than the closed records, which are blanked out.Usually the inhabitants of a household are listed in the same way that theywould be on a census, starting the father and continuing with the mother andthe children in descending order of age; lodgers and visitors are likely to beat the end.
You won't always be able to see where onehousehold ends and the next begins, but you can easily work it out from the wayin which the entries are numbered. Remember, you know how many open and howmany closed records there are in a household from the transcription.
This means that in most cases you'll beable to work out whose records are hidden, by combing what you can see ordeduce with your own knowledge of the family.
Tip:in a few cases you might see a small part of a closed record - perhaps thedescender from a letter 'y', 'g', 'p', or 'j'. The position of the descendermay help to confirm that the hidden person was named 'Mary', or 'George'.
Who should we be looking for, and why?
Often the most interesting revelationsare going to come from researching people who aren't close relatives. For example,I discovered one of my Dad's cousins living with a man who wasn't her husband,and that solved several mysteries for me. It also indirectly enabled me toidentify several cousins who are still living - so much from just onehousehold!
I also found it interesting looking at neighbours,some of whom I remembered from my childhood in the 1950s - and I discovered a lotthat I hadn't known about a family friend who my mother had worked with duringthe War.
How much you learn will depend not somuch on how much you already know, but on how open you are to making newdiscoveries - indeed, the more you know, the easier it will be to expand yoursearch outwards, to more distant relatives. What you find in the register won'tbe an end in itself, but a gateway toyet more information - once you know precisely when someone was born it's usuallyeasy to find their death (assuming they died between Q3 1969 and 2007), andthat makes it easier to fill in the gaps in between.
What aren't we seeing?
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This rather fuzzy photo is the onlyknown image of the right hand side of a register - we normally only see theleft-hand page and the first column of the right-hand page. I grabbed this shotfrom a video on the Findmypast blog.
I have a copy of my own record from theNHS Central Register, from which I've been able to deduce that many, perhaps most,of the notes relate to people moving from one NHS area to another. (I'd beinterested to hear from anyone who has also obtained a copy of their indexentry.)
We're probably not missing out on verymuch by not seeing that right-hand page - frustrating as it is not to be ableto see it!
Track down evacueesusing LostCousins
The evacuation of millions of Britishschoolchildren during World War 2 will have had a lasting effect, not only ontheir lives, but also on the lives of the families with whom they werebilleted. Having found my mother on the 1939 Register I wondered how feasibleit would be to track down members of the family she lived with - and realisedthat one way of doing this would be to use theMy Ancestorspage....
Whilst you can't enter people from the1939 Register on yourMy Ancestorspage (at least, not at themoment), many of them will also have been recorded on the 1911 Census. I'vetherefore created a new category in theRelationship or categorydropdownmenu - WW2 evacuation - so that I and other members can search for relatives ofthe people who looked after the evacuees in our families during the war.
Here's the first ever entry using thisnew category:
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I'll let you know if I get a match! Inthe meantime, why not see who you can find?
Extending your treebeyond 1911 using the 1939Register
If your family comes from England orWales, and you have either a Findmypast.co.uk or Ancestry.co.uk subscription,you'll not only have access to fully transcribed GRO birth, marriage, and deathindexes but also to the complete England & Wales 1911 Census. By combiningthese two resources you'll probably find that you can add dozens of new relativesto your family tree - without spending a penny on certificates!
Here's how I generally go about it:
(1) Where there are married couples onthe 1911 Census and the wife is of child-bearing age (typically up to 47) Isearch the birth indexes for children born to the couple using the familysurname and mother's maiden name. The rarer the surnames the more confident Ican be about identifying the entries, especially if I also take into accountthe choice of forenames, the timing of the births, and the districts where thebirths were registered.
Tip: even if the surnames aren'tparticularly rare, the surname combination might be - a search for marriageswhere the bride and groom have the same surnames will help you gauge how likelyit is that the births you've found belong to your couple.
(2) I then check to see whether I canidentify marriages involving relatives who were single in 1911. This isgenerally only possible when the surnames are fairly uncommon (but see below).
(3) Having identified these post-1911marriages, or possible marriages, I look in the birth indexes for children bornto the couple using the technique described in (1) above. Sometimes the choiceof forenames will help to confirm whether or not I've found the right marriage.
(4) I next look for the deaths of thecouples whose children I've been seeking. If the precise date of birth isincluded in the death indexes, as it is for later entries, this often helps toconfirm not only that I've found the right death entry, but also - in the caseof a female relative - that I've found the right marriage. Even if I don't knowexactly when my relative was born, the quarter in which the birth wasregistered defines a 19 week window (remember that births can be registered upto 6 weeks after the event). Why does this work best for female relatives?Because they will have changed their surname on marriage, so their birth willbe registered in one name and the death in another - and there will be amarriage that links the two.
Tip: probate calendars can also provideuseful clues - often one of the children, or the surviving spouse, will benamed as executor or administrator. You can search the calendars from 1858-1966atAncestry, or from 1858-1959 atFindmypast;if you don't have access to either of these sites, or want to search for morerecent wills, you'll need to use the freeProbateService.
(5) Now I start on the next generation,the children who were recorded in 1911 or whose births I have been able toidentify as belonging to my tree. I look for both marriages and deaths, becauseif I find the death of a female relative recorded under her maiden name, thisusually indicates that she didn't marry, and even for a male relative the placeof death might help to determine whether a marriage I've found in an unexpectedpart of the country.
(6) Having identified marriages I thenlook in the birth indexes for children born to those marriages - and continuethis process until either I reach the present day, or I get to a point where Ican't tell with reasonable certainty which entries relate to my relatives. Mindyou, when it comes to more recent generations there are all sorts of additionalsources of information - including social networking sites, Google, searches ofthe electoral roll (see the next article) or even the phone book (not everyoneis ex-directory).
Here are some key dates to bear in mindwhen searching:
2nd April 1911 - Census Day
1st July 1911 - from this date themother's maiden name was included in the birth indexes
1st January 1912 - the surname of thespouse was included in the marriage indexes
1st January 1966 - from this date thefirst two forenames are shown in full in the birth indexes
1st April 1969 - the precise date ofbirth was included in the death indexes and the first two forenames were shownin full
During the 20th century middle namesare more consistent than they were in the 19th century - there is less of atendency for them to appear or disappear between birth, marriage, and death.Unfortunately, for more than half a century after 1910 only the first forenamewas shown in full in the birth and death indexes, and the marriage indexes onlyshow one forename for the whole period after 1910 - so a perfect match on thesecond forename is only possible if the relative was born before 1911 and diedafter March 1969.
What can you hope to achieve byfollowing the techniques I've described? In my case I was able to extend somelines forward by as many as four generations, although three is more typical.In the process I added hundreds of 20th century relatives to my family tree,the majority ofwhomwere still living.
Since the1939 Registerwasreleased I've been able to extend my tree further by confirming that many ofthe marriages I'd noted as possible marriages did indeed involve my relatives(the fact that precise birthdates are given is a really big help).
One of the best things about the 1939Register is the way that it continued to be used after the War - and so thesurnames of many women were updated to reflect marriages (and divorces) thattook place in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s or even later. This makes the 1939Register more useful than a static census, and since it was released I've addeddozens more relatives to my tree, most ofwhommuststill be living.
Note: there will often be otherresources that you can draw upon, including parish registers (some onlinecollections extended beyond 1911), newspaper announcements (iannounce
isgood for recent events, theBritish Newspaper Archive- also atFindmypast-for early 20th century events). Burials recorded atDeceasedOnlineare another great source (for example, there may beother family members in the same grave). HistoricPhone Directoriesup to 1984 are online atAncestry. Ancestry and Findmypast each have historic Electoral Rolls -Findmypast covers much of the country, but Ancestry is best for London.
How evacuation wasplanned in 1939
In 1939 each area of the country wasassigned one of three roles:
- Evacuation
- Reception
- Neutral
I was fortunate to find adocumentonline at theHistPopwebsite which details which areas came intowhich category, and I suspect many of you will find it very interesting to lookup the areas where your family lived. It's about 12 pages long - use thePreviousPageandNext Pagelinks at the bottom to navigate;my understanding is that areas not specifically mentioned were Reception areas.
Of course, trying to predict whichparts of the country would be safe from the Luftwaffe wasn't a precise science- one member wrote to tell me that his family moved "out of the frying paninto the fire" when they relocated!
When Britain declared war on Germany inSeptember 1939 it was a sad day, but it wasn't a surprise. You probablyremember that when I wrote about Operation Pied Piper last weekend I mentionedthat evacuation forms were circulated to parents as early as May 1939, and itturns out that plans for the issue of identity cards were being formulated asearly as 1st December 1938, when the General Register Office circulated amemorandumto Registrars of Births anddeaths about:
"proceedingimmediatelywith certain of the preparations for the 1941 Census, as a means of providingfor the institution of a National Register at very short notice, should anational emergency arise."
Qualifications desirable in anenumerator
When a further memorandum went out fromthe General Register Office on 6th January 1939 it stated that:
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When you've seen as many pages from theNational Register as I have, you'll know that the enumerators didn't alwayslive up to those high standards - even handwriting that appears neat can behard to read if the letters are written inconsistently, or confusingly.
The fact that subsequent amendments tosurnames were made in block capitals suggests that even at the time thehandwriting was causing problems.
With the threat of war looming, theBritish Government prepared plans for mass evacuation. During WW1 Germany hadbombed London and other targets using Zeppelin airships (you can read moreabout ithere), but now the enemy had modern bombers(over 1000 were operational by September 1939), and the bombing ofGuernicain 1937, during the SpanishCivil War, had demonstrated the devastation that could be wrought. Preparationsstarted long before the war: thisformheadedGovernment Evacuation Schemeisdated May 1939 - note that mothers were asked if they wanted to go with theirchildren.
Operation Pied Piper went into actionon 1st September 1939, two days before Neville Chamberlain, the British PrimeMinister made his momentous radio broadcast to the nation:
"This morning the British Ambassador in Berlinhanded the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard fromthem by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troopsfrom Poland, a state of warwouldexistbetweenus.
"I have to tell you now that no suchundertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war withGermany."
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<![endif]>Children had assembled in school playgrounds on themorning of 1st September, each with a luggage tag attached to their coat, andcarrying bare necessities: their gas mask, underwear, pyjamas or nightdress,plimsolls, toothbrush, comb, soap, and a face flannel. Over half a millionchildren were evacuated from London alone during September, and my mother -then 13 years old - appears to have been one of them, because on RegistrationDay (29th September) she wasn't at home with my grandparents.
Over the course of just three daysaround 1.5 million mothers and children were sent from towns and cities intothe countryside, mostly by train - you might this Southern Railwaysposterinteresting. However, becausebombing raids on cities didn't materialise in the first few months of the war,many children went back home - over half had returned by January 1940, despiteGovernmentwarnings(I believe my mother was one ofthem).
There were further waves of evacuationduring 1940, and my mother's school was evacuated toFinnamoreWoodCamp, Marlow,Buckinghamshireon 22nd April - you can see aphotoherewhich shows some of the schoolgirls.My mother wasn't amongst them, however - my grandmother wouldn't allow her toleave home again - and so my mother left school and spent the durationsupporting the war effort, working at the nearby Ship Carbon factory, whichmade carbon rods for cinema projectors and searchlights.
A smaller number of children wereevacuated overseas, a story told in the bookOut of Harm's Way, written by an evacuee -but this programme came to end when the SS City of Benares was sunk inSeptember 1940, killing most of the children on board.Howeversome children were evacuated privately even after this incident.
In 1939 the country was divided intomore than 1400 administrative areas, each of which was assigned a three lettercode, suchasCJLfor Bromley in Kent and ZDJ forPortmadocin Caernarvonshire (larger areas may havehad more than one code, in which case the code in the table is the first in theblock). When you find one of your relatives you'll see that a fourth letter hasbeen appended to the end - this specifies the enumeration district.
You will find a table of all the codesand areashere.
A little bitof history
When, in February 2007, I asked toinspect the 1939 Register under the Freedom of Information Act I was rebuffed -it's covered by the 1920 Census Act, they claimed. Absolute rubbish, but for awhile they got away with it.
Eventually, thanks to the efforts ofGuy Etchells and others, it was agreed to provideinformation from the Register, subject to a fee of £42 per household (whichwasn't refundable under any circ*mstances). Then, in March 2014, Findmypastannounced that they had signed a deal with the National Archives which wouldsee the register becoming available online within 2 years.
More tips (some duplicate tips mentioned above)
·Use the Advanced search - it'll save you time
·Middle names are not shown, only initials (eventhough it would appear that full middle names were recorded on the originalhousehold schedules)
·Closed records are NOT indexed, so will not show upin searches, nor will people who were in army barracks or similar institutions
·If you don't have a subscription you'll be asked if you want to 'unlock' the record- this is the point at which the 60 credits are deducted; in return you get tosee a transcription of the 'open' entries in the household, and the image ofthe register page
·The register pages are like the enumerators'summaries that we see for the censuses up to 1901 - the entries have beencopied from the schedules completed by the householders, so we don't get to seeour ancestors' handwriting (on the other hand we see a whole page of entries,up to 44 - but on average 14 of these will be closed at launch)
·The references displayed are in this format
Ref: RG101/1100C/019/36 Letter Code: CCVZ
whereRG101is the National Archives reference for the1939 Register (this doesn't change)
1100Cis the piece number
019is the item number (it identifies a specific page but Icouldn't see the number in the image)
36is the line number on the page - again it's not shown, but youcan count down
The Letter Code refers to the area - there's a guide to these codes intheTNA blog, and a list of codeshere
·You're also given the Schedule Number and ScheduleSub-Number but can't search using this information; people in the samehousehold have the same Schedule Number (the Sub-Number is the line on theSchedule, usually 1,2,3,4 etc)
·Make a note of the references - they'll enable youto find the page again instantly (and you never know, one day we might usethese records at LostCousins!)
·National Registration Day was 29th September 1939,but someone who is listed may not have arrived until the next day (assumingthey were not registered elsewhere)
·'Unpaid DD' means 'Unpaiddomestic duties'
·To open a closed record by uploadinga death certificatestartfrom the household transcription, but DON'T clickCheck ifyou can open a closed entry. Instead clickUpdate the record,andchooseAskus toopen a closed recordfrom the drop down menu. You must have a 12 monthBritain or World subscription to be able to do this.
·Take a look at thisblog entry,posted by Findmypast on 3rd November
Unexpected bonuses
·The register was a working document - though it wascreated in 1939 it was amended and annotated as people moved, married, anddied; most of the annotations are on the right-hand page, where we can't seethem, but there are some on the left-hand page (see below for a guide toabbreviations)
·Sometimes a woman's surname will have been crossedout and another surname written in - this is usually a name change on marriage;in the Search results the surname in 1939 will appear in brackets;thereare more than two surnames all but the most recent will be inbrackets
·In these cases you can search on any of the surname(you don't have to tick the surname variants box), but the entry you wantprobablywon'tbe at the top ofthe search results because of the way they are sorted
·If you're very lucky you may find someone whosename changed on adoption (they would have had to be adopted after the creationof the register, otherwise you wouldn't see the birth name)
·On the right hand side of the register you can sometimes see a note suchas 'ARP warden'
·You might see an alias recorded, for exampleone 'Harry' was noted as 'o/w Henry'
·Occasionally the date of death is recorded on the right handpage - check it against the GRO indexes to make sure
·My aunt's year of birth was erroneously transcribed(by the enumerator) as '76' rather than '16' which meant her record was openwhen it should have been closed - were she still with us she would have beenabsolutely delighted!
·Sometimes you'll see a note such as "See page14"; in this case there will usually be an arrow to the left or right ofthe image - click the arrow to see the other record
·When there isn't an arrow you are likely to findthe individual listed twice in the Search results; if so you'll have to pay toaccess the second page (but it might be worth asking for a refund)
·If your relative was in an institution you should be able to see all ofthe pages relating to that institution - click the left and right arrows
Interpretingthe notation
The modern day NHS computer systemstill uses some of the forms - you can find detailed guidancehere, but most of it isn't relevant and thesenotes probably tell you all you need to know:
·Dates shown are usually not the date of the event,but seem to be the date of the update (or possibly the date on the form thattriggered the update)
·CR283 is a form that is used when there is a Changeof Surname, Forename, or Date of Birth (most changes will be surname changes,of course)
·NEL probably stands for "North EastLondon"; many other three letter codes can be interpreted by referring tothistable
·IC or I/C almost certainly stands for Identity Card
·See Con Sheet means "see continuationsheet" (unfortunately the continuation sheets don't seem to be available)
