1914 census???
 

I am reading a novel about WW1 (and it has been historically accurate so far) but it mentions the short-lived "Derby Scheme" by which men could assent to join up if and when they were needed. It quickly became apparent that conscription would be needed because "it was clear that th number of men volunteering under the Derby Scheme was nothng like the number of men of combatant age identified

in a census taken the previous year".

Is this a mistake and is the author referring to the 1911 census, or was there indeed a census taken in 1914/15 to identify men of fighting age and if so, how was this census taken? Not door to door surely? Was the information extrapolated from the 1911 census?

OC

No idea OC but sounds interesting if accurate.

Answered my own question:

The government passed the National Registration Act on 15 July 1915 as a step towards stimulating recruitment and to discover how many men between the ages of 15 and 65 were engaged in each trade. All those in this age range who were not already in the military were obliged to register, giving details of their employment details. The results of this census became available by mid-September 1915: it showed there were almost 5 million males of military age who were not in the forces, of which 1.6m were in the "starred" (protected, high skill) jobs.

I wonder if this National Registration list is in the public domain?

OC

Ahem, thankyou Margaret.

OC

:d:d:d:d:d:d:d

I googled "national registration index 1915" and read a thread on the Great War forum where the consensus of opinion seemed to be that the records were held locally and were destroyed at the end of WW1. Not sure they were absolutely certain of that though.........

Merry

that sounds about par for the course. It was just a thought. I expect if this did exist, someone would have known about it before I read this novel, lol!

Mind you, they should really have known all this in 1911 as that is one of the purposes of any census - to find out how many men there are of combatant age. And I do wonder what the compliance rate was of self-reported military fodder!

OC

No idea. My mother always said that her father was in a protected occupation as a grocer and my father's father was also protected as a small farmer/market gardener so I think the scope was wider than only highly skilled occupations.

This give some information on conscription in WWI

http://www.parliament.uk/business/pu...-conscription/