The 1939 England Register

At the outbreak of the Second World War the British Government took a register of the population on September 29 1939. The records have been released but with the line for anybody still alive at the time of release redacted with a comment that 'This record is officially closed'.

The information does not follow the pattern of the censuses in all respects so some columns below are not used [and appear greyed out] and others have been adapted. No relationships to other members of the household are given and, instead of age, the date of birth is given but the place of birth is not given. There is a column on the form for use in institutions [Officer, Visitor, Servant, Patient, Inmate] but that is not included below, nor is the 'gender' column.

One thing to note is that some of the entries show U D D as the occupation. That stands for 'unpaid domestic duties', a description that appears a lot, in full.

The enumerators issued identity cards as they collected the data but military and government personnel already had them so the records do not feature military bases or even members of the forces billeted in homes, including their own homes. They do, however, record members of the forces on leave and civilians on military bases.

In the table below, the Reference is a link to an image of the relevant schedule of the register. In 1939 the Enumeration Districts were coded with a 4 character Alphabet code. A new tab will open when you click on the link, just close it to return to this page.