If you are interested in tracing the history of your family via the internet may be interested to know that the 1939 Census is now available through Ancestry and Find My Past. Alternatively if you are a member of Essex Libraries you can access Find My Past for free at Libraries across the County.
Dubbed ‘The Wartime Domesday Book’, the 1939 Register is the most comprehensive survey of the population of England and Wales ever taken. It was taken on 29 September, just after the start of the Second World War. 65,000 enumerators were employed to visit every house in England and Wales to take stock of the civil population. The information that they recorded was used to issue Identity Cards, plan mass evacuations, establish rationing and coordinate other war-time provisions. In the longer term, the 1939 Register would go on to play a central role in the establishment of post-war services like the NHS.
The 1939 Register is particularly significant as the only surviving record of the population between 1921 and 1951. It bridges a 30-year gap in history as the 1931 census was destroyed during the war and the 1941 census was never taken.
Just as in a census, the 1939 Register will reveal everyone who was in the household on the night of the 29th September 1939. For each individual, the 1939 Register will tell you: Full name; address; date of birth; marital status; occupation; and whether the individual was a member of the armed services or reserves. However it does not include place of birth.
The 1931 census for England and Wales was destroyed by fire during the Second World War, and there was no census taken in 1941, making the information contained in the 1939 Register even more valuable.
An average of three people lived in each household. The register provides unprecedented insight into those 12 million households, including the composition of the labour force in England and Wales at the time.
Writer and broadcaster Andrew Marr said:
“The 1939 register is one of the most important documents in recent British history. A comprehensive record of the civil population on the outbreak of war, it captures a people whose lives were about to change forever. It records streets that within months, under the assault of the Luftwaffe, were to disappear; families that would be separated by the events of war: evacuation, conscription and sometimes worse. ”