The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

• • 1910 to 1919 Electoral Registers from England & Wales now available to search online with greater accuracy than ever before
  • New and improved collection bridges the vital gap between the 1911 Census and 1939 register
  • Containing 32 million names and 14 million addresses, the new Registers form a vital resource for anyone searching for ancestors or exploring the history of a home in early 20^th Century Britain ahead of the launch of 1921 Census

Leading family history website Findmypast have today announced the publication of a significant update to their collection of. These new additions have been added to Findmypast’s existing collection of indexed 1920 to 1932 registers to create a vast new resource containing 150 million records spanning over two decades.

Ahead of Findmypast’s widely anticipated release of the 1921 Census of England & Wales in January 2022, improved access to these important British Library documents will enable family historians to locate their ancestors between the 1911 Census and 1939 Register with greater ease and accuracy than ever before.

As well as adding a staggering 32 million names, Findmypast’s new and improved England & Wales, Electoral Registers 1910-1932 collection now contains over 14 million additional addresses making it a valuable resource for anyone looking to explore the history of their home.

Electoral Registers are listings of all those registered to vote in a particular area. The lists were created annually to record the names of eligible voters and their reason for eligibility, such as their residence or ownership of a property. Registration for voters in England and Wales has been required since 1832 and registers were typically published annually, making them particularly useful for tracking ancestors between censuses, uncovering previous occupants of a property or exploring the history of a local area.

Thanks to a new technique known as “Structured Data Extract”, England & Wales Electoral Registers 1910-1932 has been fully indexed, allowing users to search millions of images by name, date, location and keyword. As well as images, each search result provides a transcript recording the individual’s name, registration year, address or abode, the nature of their qualification to vote or a description of their property, and occasionally their occupation or age.

This new method has not only enabled Findmypast to extract large volumes of meaningful information from so many original documents, it has also allowed for this data to be structured and organised to a greater degree than traditional Optical Character Recognition. This not only enables more precise searches but also the use of name variants which will catch a huge assortment of miss-spelled names.

RICHARD JACKSON, Findmypast’s Data Development Manager said: To extract meaningful data from images, the documents go through three distinct steps. Firstly, Findmypast process the images, de-skewing to align wonky text. Then the images are enhanced to amplify the text on the page for better character recognition. Once the text on each image has been captured, the Structured Data Extract process analyses and identifies the contents and structure of each image based on a variety of expectations.

In the case of Electoral Registers, names are expected to appear on the left-hand side of each image with address information on the right. In time, we hope to revisit this dataset to extract even more value for our customers and hope that they enjoy the results of this first stage of extraction.

Findmypast is now able provide users with unrivalled record coverage for early 20th century Britain, allowing them to trace their family story across a period of history that has traditionally been difficult for many researchers.

Other records available to search this Findmypast Friday

Scotland Monumental Inscriptions

Discover your relatives' final resting places in Scotland with a unique resource that has just been updated with thousands of new records.

Check Findmypast’s burial ground list for the date ranges and number of records included for each location.

Newspapers

Hot off the press, what family stories will you uncover in Findmypast’s latest newspaper update? Brand new publications include:

• • Australian and New Zealand Gazette covering 1850-1882
  • Borough of Greenwich Free Press covering 1855-1856 and 1858-1865
  • British Banner 1848 covering 1852
  • British Banner 1856 covering 1857
  • Clerkenwell Dial and Finsbury Advertiser covering 1862 and 1864-1865
  • Hammersmith Advertiser covering 1861-1866
  • Islington Times covering 1857, 1859-1862, 1864-1865, and 1871-1874
  • Lynn News & County Press covering 1871-1873, 1875-1889, 1891-1892, 1913, 1915, 1918, 1924, 1938-1939 and 1942
  • North Londoner covering 1874-1875
  • Palladium 1825 covering 1825
  • South London Times and Lambeth Observer covering 1856-1865
  • Southwark Mercury covering 1879-1881

While thousands of additional pages have been added to:

• • Age from 1852
  • British Mercury or Wednesday Evening Post from 1822
  • Brockley News, New Cross and Hatcham Review from 1891
  • Bury Free Press from 1988
  • Chelsea & Pimlico Advertiser from 1864
  • Croydon Times from 1948-1949
  • Daily News (London) from 1924, 1926, 1928-1938, 1940-1949, 1951-1954 and 1957-1960
  • Diss Express from 1986
  • Eastern Counties’ Times from 1913
  • Faversham News from 1900 and 1904
  • Fleming’s British Farmers’ Chronicle from 1827
  • Grantham Journal from 1986
  • Kingsland Times and General Advertiser from 1861
  • Liverpool Telegraph from 1837
  • Lynn Advertiser from 1990
  • Metropolitan from 1857
  • Sheerness Times Guardian from 1878-1882
  • West London Times from 1862 and 1865
  • Westminster Times from 1864-1866