Top 10 Archives… No.8
- 8th November 2011
Number eight in our countdown of the Top 10 most accessed collections are our Electoral Registers:
A perennially popular family and house history resource. The earliest Worcester City electoral registers held by the Worcestershire Record Office are dated 1837 and the most recent is from 2005. For the rest of the county we hold electoral registers from 1843 up to 1987. Universal suffrage was only achieved in the United Kingdom in 1928 so this is something to bear in mind when searching through the registers, just because you can’t find a person doesn’t mean they weren’t living there; they just may not have been eligible to vote.
A sample of a page from an Electoral Register
Electoral Registers are lists of persons eligible to vote in general elections. The registers are often arranged by street rather than by the name of voter. This can make searching for individuals on the electoral register time consuming if you do not know their address. If you do know where someone was living the electoral registers may give some indication as to when a person arrived at a particular location and also when they left. Therefore electoral registers can be used for tracing previous occupiers of a household.
Lesley, Archives Assistant, collecting Electoral Registers for use in our searchroom
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