1939 Register

[HughC]

A useful resource, but it would be more useful if there weren't quite so many transcription errors, at least on the Findmypast web site.  Some of them are really crass: not just misspelled names but incorrect gender or marital status, and also addresses (admittedly Salutary Mount is an unusual name for a street, but "Sanitary Mount" is somewhat less probable).

I urge everyone with a Findmypast subscription to look up ancestors and relatives who were alive in September 1939 (if you haven't already done so), and to report any errors in the transcript.  To do that, click on 'More actions', 'Report an Error', and don't forget to 'Submit corrections' at the foot of the page.  Assuming the corrections are then made, that should help others to find the relevant people.

Note that there are some errors in the original, including a few incorrectly declared dates of birth;
Findmypast won't alter those.  And I suspect that men who were already serving in the armed forces had military ID cards and were not generally included in the 1939 Register -- though I did find my father who was in the army but visiting his parents (perhaps on pre-posting leave) and my mother who had just joined the WAAF and was doing clerical work at an RAF aerodrome.

It's a matter of luck whether anyone born less than a century ago is included.
I found one cousin born in the 1930s and still alive, though the record for his deceased sister is "officially closed".

[Top-of-the-hill]

  I regularly submit corrections to FindMyPast on various records. I eventually found my mother by her first name and date of birth, but the original was so obscure that I didn't bother to submit a correction.

[MollyC]

Note that there are some errors in the original, including a few incorrectly declared dates of birth

RC uncovered an interesting example of this recently.  See reply #26 at the foot of this page. https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=880113.18     and #30, next page.

There is a 15 year discrepancy, which was officially amended in 1942.  This person's wife and family had evacuated from London to Luton.  He remained, living in a pub which had managed to copy an entirely incorrect date on to the form.  It was officially amended when he became a patient in a Luton hospital.

What is interesting is the last line, the different ways Ancestry and Findmypast dealt with this.  I think Findmypast was probably wiser, leaving it blank, so you would check the entry just in case.