Genealogy Chat

Does anyone know, please, why people might appear twice in the 1939 register?

The case that brought this up is:
Edward R Cutts
29 Oct 1900

On one page all but four names are redacted, on the other only four are redacted.

The pages are clearly different (ie are not duplicates) as the other records on the heavily redacted sheet do not appear on the other page.

Out of interest I checked another of the un-redacted names:
Mabel Swindell
24 September 1903

She also appears twice.

What might explain this please?

Are you using Ancestry?

From Find My Past, the clear pages for both have a note - see Page 14 - but you can't get to that via a search

From Ancestry - on the heavily redacted pages - both have notes - Mabel's entry says "see page 6" and and Edward's says "see Page 4" - the original pages

I've seen this before on Ancestry, but don't know why it was done originally

They have been entered twice but their addresses read the same.

____________

The nearest I can get to an explanation is this from the National Archives site - although the entries aren't actually crossed out
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/1939-register/

8. What does it mean when an entry is crossed out and marked ‘See page…?’
These refer to ‘continuation entries’ where the line in the ‘postings’ column (see section 9.3) against a person’s name was full up, and a new line had to be created for any new entries.

The new line was added at the back of the enumeration book or sometimes at the back of the next book in large enumeration districts that comprised two or more books. You can browse to the page containing the continuation entry if it is in the same book; if it is in the next book you can use the browse function described in section 5.2 to go there, and then browse to the right page. However, this is very unlikely to contain any additional information.

Section 9.3 referred to as the postings column should be 9.4 I think

Thank you for your replies. I should have said this was on Ancestry. On FMP the image is the same as the lightly redacted version on Ancestry.

greyghost has it exactly right.

Have added extra info to my post above

Thank you again greyghost.

Browsing, as you suggest, shows 13 pages on FMP and 15 on Ancestry. Strange.

I'll see whether Ancestry can come up with a reason ...

I don't know how significant it might be but the heavy redaction starts on page 13

It's quite a common occurrence, though I don't know what it means..

We had a similar thread recently about other people - which doesn't quite seem to fit the National Archives explanation:

https://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards/board/ancestors/thread/1386542

Yes, that looks like exactly the same issue: loads of blanked out entries between a handful of duplicated open ones. Thanks for linking the two threads ArgyllGran.

I've asked Ancestry for an explanation and I'll post back here if I discover anything useful.

It seems (!) as if FMP have simply not included or transcribed (some of?) the duplicate pages. It might be worth asking them for an explanation too ...

I asked both FMP and Ancestry about this. Ancestry tried their best but didn't have an answer, FMP is still trying to find an answer.

However, thanks to Ancestry pointing me at a YouTube video, which then led me to another YouTube video, I have an explanation. Here's the explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujbjTxPqo_0

It starts at about 45 minutes into the video.

The video is done by Audrey Collins, a (or perhaps the) family history specialist at TNA, it's therefore authoritative.

My quick summary: these are overflow records. The right hand side of the record books (which we cannot see in the images) contains personal information eg medical. If - say - this space was filled, then you needed somewhere to put new information. So, at the back of the book a duplicate record was made and the new information recorded there, and the two records were linked with "see page 4" or whatever.

Keith

Very interesting.
Thanks, Keith.