1939 Register up and running (Part 3)

[majm]

this is a big "if"

having seen quite a few entries at TNA yesterday, if the street is listed as "ditto" on the schedule(and quite a few on some pages are) you may not find it. The transcribers transcribe what they see.

may not explain all missing entries but could do for some.

What registration district is the street in? could it be in part of another district?

What's your grandfathers name and year of birth and we can try to have a look for you?

Ditto     Is that indicating that the teams were not familiar with that expression, or that the teams were not permitted to include the original line that each "ditto" referred back to,   .... what if the document had only used the '' or had ticked or had written as above ...... 

In other words, did the transcribers literally copy word by word without putting into context? 

So, has anyone searched for the street as though its actual name was/is Ditto and if so, does that 'time out' due to the huge popularity of that street name.

Cheers,  JM (A transcriber from the last century, where we would replace the ditto with the actual words to which it referred, as a standard practice). 

[ShaunJ]

For missing people it could be a good idea to put the forename in the surname box and the surname in the forename box

That's a good suggestion. An exact search for Jones as a first name produces 2090 hits

[MattD30]

Hi Matt

It would appear that the notes in the last column have various meanings and no-one from HSCIC has come forward with a concise explanation for all of them.

Staff at FindMyPast have no idea, they have only digitised and transcribed the data, they didn't work with the actual register with up to 1991.

Hi dawnsh

I agree the comments must have various meanings. I was at TNA on Saturday when I found (some of) my ancestors and relatives and I asked the staff there about the comments. I spoke to two different people about these comments and neither had any idea about what they related to, and one suggested asking Findmypast. I hope there are not pages or bits missing in these records and it would definitely be nice for Findmypast to let us know what these comments refer to.

Matt

[Ruskie]

I've only purchased one record. The address is "ditto" but on the transcription the street is named. Both residents and street address are as I expected them to be.

[Guy Etchells]

What amazes me is how people's expectations have changed.
Back in the days of visiting archives if a "new" record was released we did not expect the staff to be able to answer our questions about what the abbreviations meant and where this road was or that annotation could be found, we worked it out by ourselves over time by looking at more records as they came available.
Now people expect all the questions to be answered on a plate so all they have to do is add the records to their tree like completing a jigsaw puzzle.

The 1939 National Registration has been widely available for a week, given time as more and more people download records and more records are opened answers will become apparent.
When it becomes part of the subscription service (as history tells us it will) we will all be able to check things out for ourselves and techniques will develop.
In the meantime some of the answers are available at the National Archives where records in the RG 28 series may give the answers to some of the questions.

See for example http://www.rootschat.com/links/01ggy/

We should not expect everything to be handed to us on a plate but we should still do research on the records we are interested in.

Cheers
Guy

[dawnsh]

Hi JM

I do not know what instructions were given to the transcribers but you can do a free person search where the street is called "ditto" and there are 1569 results.

Dawn

[KGarrad]

It would appear that people are still confused over this 1939 thing!

1. It was not a census!
I do wish people would stop calling it the "1939 census"!
That just confuses others as to what to expect.

2. It was not arranged by Registration District!
It was arranged by Local Councils (as they existed in 1939) - Urban District Councils, Rural District Councils, Metropolitan Borough Councils, County Borough, etc.
A different entity from Registration Districts!

My own family, in North Somerset, are to be found either in Portishead Urban District, or Long Ashton Rural District. Normally I would never search "Long Ashton"!

[groom]

Am I right in assuming that you entered everyone who normally lived at your address, whether or not they were there at the time, unless they had already enlisted and were in Army barracks or had been evacuated? So if you were on holiday you were entered at your home address? I've seen a few references to "Perhaps he was away from home that night."

[StevieSteve]

I shall be following Guy's advice and will have a look at the handbook in RG28 tomorrow

Watch this space...