So, why try to fool people with their laws regarding 'privacy' having to prove someone is alive who they say is deceased?
How many of these Laws are actually 'Law'?
By law they can't do this/that/next but at the same time they are breaking the law by having people (less than 100 yrs old) on view to the public!
In other words the word 'Law' comes into force if/when it suits them.
I think a court would be more inclined to throw out the 'Law' of a 'discussion' (with a relative) of someone who's name (who shouldn't be) by 'Law' is open to the world on their site if the relative took them to court for breaking the 'Law' by having that relation on view to the public simply because they can't prove where they got their supposed proof of the person being deceased.
Annie
The 100 year rule is something that has confused researchers for a number of years.
Initially it was created in 1966 by the Lord Chancellor’s Instrument No. 12.
That Statutory Instrument (a type of ‘Act of Parliament’ that creates laws) was repealed by the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
That means that the 100 year rule only had standing in law between 1966 and 2000 (34 years).
After 2000 a number of archives such as the National Archives and the GRO decided to continue to use the now defunct law as a general guideline or office policy to help them decide which records to release and which to withhold from public access.
It is however only that an office policy as the legal basis of it had been repealed.
In February 2004 the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on National Records and Archives considered and accepted a proposal for the use of a standard closure period, and that a lifetime of 100 years should be assumed.
However that proposal is guidance or advice unlike the earlier Statutory Instrument it is not a law, that is the difference.
There are many factors at play that allow any particular record to be open or closed on the 1939 National Registration some of which were caused by the way the data was transcribed.
Unlike most transcriptions which are transcribed line by line in the normal fashion of reading a page the 1939 was transcribed in columns instead, this was done to prevent transcribers gaining access to “private information”.
On completion the columns were reassembled to form pages but sometimes an entry would have been missed in the transcription or duplicated which meant that sometimes the columns were not aligned correctly.
This could mean that an entry was opened or remained closed when the 1939 was released.
In other instances a person’s birth date was mis-transcribed giving the impression the person was older or younger than they were. In addition the right hand page (which was not scanned due to it containing medical information) carried a column which was marked when a person died. Sometimes this was marked in error, when for instance a person emigrated or left the patient list of a doctor, in other cases this was not marked when the person died, perhaps they died overseas or the doctor was not informed of their death.
The National Archives and FindMyPast are trying their best to comply with the wishes of those whose records they hold and with the wishes of the general population, whilst complying with the law of England & Wales, but we must keep in mind errors do and have occurred both now and in the past, some of which are not easy to correct without proof of the situation.
Cheers
Guy
