Genealogy Chat

Individual libraries seem to have different policies on what electoral rolls they keep on open display and photocoping policies of these books. Broadly speaking you can view and take handwritten notes of anything (including the recent and current versions though these may be elsewhere like at the town hall) but there are usually coping restrictions on anything less than 30 years old (c. 1975), and even if you are allowed to take a photocopy of an old register pre-dating 1975, the librarian may insist that you copy only one page from each year and not whole sections en masse - there are no hard and fast rules, and individual policies vary somewhat.

Very many places have Post Office directories (and many other named directories, Kelly's being the most usual one) which may list residents of a town in alphabetical order. You can therefore look them up and see where they were living. However, it is very variable as to whether all households are listed or not. Where I live they are brilliant, plus we had a little local newspaper here that listed all the residents of the town (Bournemouth) each month!! It's just a pity I don't have any ancestors from here!! The thing is to check with the local library as to what they hold......... Merry

Thanks Michael. I will have a look and see how i get on. Thanks Jen

Around about 1880 the electoral rolls become much more difficult to search as from that date forward they are ordered by street addresses and not surnames. This is not so much of a problem if you are searching in small rural parishes, but can be very time consuming when searching large cities like Manchester which I have had the misfortune to try doing. There are usually index books to the streets which tell you which ward they were in (usually letter coded AA,BB,CC etc) which enables you to flick through the book or the microfilm itself and find the street you are after quite easily, so yes, it helps a great deal to know the street you are looking for. It is probably best to leaf through a copy of the local Kelly's directory for the era you are after and make a note of the surnames and addresses to cross-reference with the electoral roll itself. Remember that women won't appear on the list until about 1928 I think it was, and you will only appear on there when you reach the minimum voting age, currently 18. Hope this helps. Michael

Hi Julie, Thankyou it must be the electrol role that i have read about then. I believe to view this you would need an address, where would you find out where the family lived if you can't view the census? Sorry so many questions but i'm going back again Wednesday so want to go wih everything i need to save another trip if possible. Thanks Jennie

(a) Your local library wouldn't hold the census anyway except maybe for the small part that covers their own local area. (b) They are quite right to say that you can't see anything more recent than 1901 as there is a 100year privacy rule in force. The next census for 1911 will not be released until January 2012 and finally (c), if the librarian even knew what he/she was talking about, they would know that the returns for 1931 were destroyed during a German air-raid during World War 2 so don't even exist in any case!!

The library was right I'm afraid. Perhaps you were thinking of electoral registers which can be viewed. Censuses are closed for 100 years because undertakings were given when they were taken that the information would be confidential. PS In any case the 1931 census was destroyed during WW2 bombing :-(

Hi i was just wondering i have been to my local library to see if they hold the 1931 census and they said that it is against the law to show anyone the census that is after 1901 is this true. I thought that you could view the census for more present years but it was only for a short amount of time. Am i wrong? Thankyou Jen