More on FindmyPast's 1939 National Register for England and Wales

I've just attended a webinar led by FindmyPast's Myko Clelland, to which various bloggers were invited, which has presented some more background on yesterday's release of the 1939 National Identity Register for England and Wales (see my review at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/review-of-1939-english-and-welsh.html), and at which we had the opportunity to post questions.

Myko's presentation started by providing some background detail on the process of collecting the original data in 1939 - with 65,000 enumerators gathering details for 41 million people, which was then presented in 7000 volumes carrying some 1.2 million pages in total. At present some 28 million people can be found on the forms through FindmyPast's database for the records. One thing to note is that when the war started Operation Pied Piper led to the relocation of 3.75 million folk, including school children and pregnant mothers, with about half of these having moved within the first month of the war, which may affect where you might find some
individuals of interest.

A couple of extra features that are worthy of note:

i) The entries presented have had their house addresses geo-tagged to a contemporary map, which means you can see where the relevant property was based.

ii) On the main search screen, you can forego the search by name option and instead search by address, simply by toggling the screen between the two options at the top of the Advanced Search page.

The questions I asked were as follows:

Where a line of redaction obscures text in a line below or above, can this be reviewed and redone to allow site of the obscured text?
We can definitely take a look - we'd obviously need to judge each case individually, but as long as moving that line doesn't reveal the person below or above then everything is good!

The images include the first column on subsequent page, but I have an example where written comments have been cut off at edge. Can a request be made for the full text to be made available, or is that the extent of the actual digitised image?
We'd have to judge each case individually, if it doesn't reveal other sensitive information we should be able to help, or at least give you a transcription if we can't show you the remainder of the image.

How long is 1939 exclusive to FindmyPast, and how long is FMP contracted with TNA to run the current scheme?
That's something we'll have to ask someone else about - we're not really privy to the contractual details outside of our licensing team. Sorry we can't be more help!

Was there an Isle of Man or Channel Islands (pre-invasion) register?
There is a 1939 register for the Channel Islands, but the Isle of Man register has actually been lost and no longer exists!


Amongst other points raised by others and answered were the following:

i) If a closed record is opened, it is opened for everyone, not just for the person asking for it to be opened. As proof of death has been accepted it becomes an open record.

ii) Those in the army will not be recorded, but spouses and children may be if in barracks.

iii) If you ask for a person with a common name to have his or her record opened, the death certificate may not be enough, particularly if the death cert does not have the date of birth on it. FMP may require additional confirmation.

iv) In my original post at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/english-and-welsh-1939-register-now.html I noted how I had previously made a request to NHSIC before it had implemented a payment scheme to charge £42 per household record. They had released details for everyone in the house bar one person. The current equivalent record on FMP shows five of these individuals redacted, as they died after 1911. FMP seems to be saying in response to another query that it will accept a copy of the NHSIC record as proof of death - i.e. the record could not be released if the individual had not been dead. I'm not sure if when I received my entry via an FOI request that the data wasn't just sent by email, so I'll need to dig out the original correspondence and see if this is accepted (it does contain the relevant D numbers etc).

v) A copy of the original register form, filled out by householders, is available at http://www.1911census.org.uk/regform1939a.jpg.


It was a very useful session, and I am somewhat impressed at this as an achievement by FindmyPast, a site that I must admit that I have personally not had a great deal of love for since its redesign not too long ago. Within the constraints that have been imposed in terms of access, this seems to be a well designed database, surprisingly more flexible than at first meets the eye, and the team seems ready to engage with customers in resolving queries concerning entries.

One thing to note is that FMP has stated their transcription rate for the records has an accuracy of 98.5%, but there are also other reasons why some folk may not appear - so do also check out Audrey Collins' post from the National Archives at http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/national-registration-happened-next/, and FMP's own posts on the dataset.

(With thanks to Myko Clelland and the FMP licensing team)

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.