The 1939 register!

[Slarti]

You may be aware that this is now available through Find My Past and Ancestry.

I was just looking at it so as to answer a question about Ancestry and have found that 2 of my great aunts had marriages that I didn't know about, at least that's what I presume the alterations of surname with a date indicate.

The really surprising thing is that one was in 1964!

Slarti

[poundcoin]

According to the National Archives site the 1939 Register was used by the NHS to update changes by marriage and they were recorded up to 1991 !

There was no Census in 1941 and the 1931 Census had been destroyed by fire , so though it didn't give all the details of a census , it was all they had to use .


Why do some entries show the married names of women who did not marry until long after 1939?

The Register was continually updated while National Registration was in force, when it was a legal requirement to notify the registration authorities of any change of name or address. This ended in 1952, but since 1948 the Register had also been used by the National Health Service, who continued updating the records until 1991, when paper-based record keeping was discontinued.