On reflection I think Frank is probably right about the county councils
compiling the lists but I think the donkey work, i.e. collecting or
receiving the householder forms and amending the previous year's list,
was done by voluntary staff of the district authority. The amended
lists would then have been sent to the county where full-time staff got
the lists printed.
As we all know memory is an unreliable source for history - it's not
just old men who forget. People not only forget, they subconsciously
adjust their memories for some unknown reason.
Brian Read
On 2 Jan 2007, at 00:19, Frank Sharman wrote:
> At 20:48 01/01/2007 +0000, Brian Read wrote:
>
>> I have no knowledge of the electoral rolls (commonly known as
>> "voters' lists") for the period you mention but in my youth as a
>> local government officer I was involved each year in the compilation
>> of such lists. Lists were compiled by each district authority. In the
>> early days of the century this would have been the local authorities
>> created under the Local Government Act, 1894, viz. urban and rural
>> district councils and borough or city councils (in England & Wales).
>> Some of these had very small populations compared with the local
>> authorities of today and consequently a small number of staff. It
>> was mainly these staff, usually working voluntarily for a fixed fee
>> who compiled the lists. Some of this work was done at home in their
>> spare time.
>
> In my youth as a local government officer (with two county councils in
> the 1960s) the electoral roll was drawn up by the county council, not
> by the UDCs, RDCs and so forth. It was done by a small group of
> people, employed full time on the job.
>
> When an election came round, voting cards had to be sent out to every
> one on the rolls; and this was done by county council staff, on a
> voluntary basis, working from home, for a fixed fee.
>
> It ought not to be difficult to check the Representation of the People
> Act to see what was supposed to happen and whether county council's
> could delegate the work to district councils - after all, old men
> forget.
>
>
> Frank Sharman
> Wolverhampton
> 01902 763246
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