National Registration Act 1915

On 15 July 1915 the National Registration Act 1915 was passed. This act required that all men and women, between the ages of 15  and 65 years of age, register at their residential location on 15 August 1915.

The registration was to undertaken in a similar way to a census however, unlike a census, the head of household was not responsible for completing the form and instead each person who came under the act would complete their own form. Some 29 million forms were issued across England, Scotland and Wales.

Men were required to complete a granite blue form and women a white form.

The returned forms were collected shortly after 15 August 1915 and compiled by the local authority. A summary of the register was passed to the Registrar General who compiled statistics however the actual forms were retained at a local level.

A card index was created for men based on the information supplied on the granite blue form and a separate one for women based on the white form.

The indexes for men and the index for women were sub divided in to separate 2 groups, single people and married/widowed people. Each of these groups were then further divided by occupation (46 groups for men and 30 groups for women),  further subdivided by age (8 groups for men and 6 for women)and then arranged alphabetically .

Two further card indexes was created, one on pink forms for all men aged between 18 years of age and 41 years of age and one on green forms for any person who had listed a secondary occupation. The index of green forms mirrored the 2 main indexes.

The final task involved the issuing of registration certificates to each person who had registered and the recording each of the certificates in a ledger.