Record Masterclass
Although many service records have been lost, the Absent Voters Lists provide a snapshot of soldiers’ lives at the end of the First World War, says Phil Tomaselli
Locate your military ancestor with Absent Voters Lists
The Absent Voters Lists started to be compiled in 1918, to enable servicemen and women who were away from home to vote – either by proxy or by postal vote. As David Lloyd George, the prime minister at the time, said, “The man who has fought must have the right to determine how the fruits of his peril are going to be dealt with.”
The 1918 Representation of the People Act allowed all men over the age of 21 to vote free of a property qualification. In addition, officers and other ranks who were 19 years old (the age a soldier was supposed to have reached to serve overseas) by 15 April 1918 had the franchise age lowered so that they could vote too. However, although many women over 30 were given the vote, there was no age reduction for those in uniform.
The general election that took place in December 1918 was the first for these enfranchised individuals, but with so many men serving overseas or away from home in the UK, electoral rolls needed to be updated. Arrangements had to be made for ballot papers to be issued to the troops, collected and returned to the correct constituencies, or proxy votes arranged. Local registration officers went house-to-house, checking for absent voters and obtaining their information. This was then passed to the regimental record offices for verification. The Army itself issued forms for men to complete, with information returned to the correct local registration officer to check and add to the roll. It was, at first, a complex and cumbersome system with many errors, but once a basic list was established, it was easier to correct and amend.
The calling of the election put an additional strain on record offices already struggling to keep up with returning prisoners of war, or men who were entitled to early demobilisation. However, although many men may have been missed, the majority received their papers and both completed and returned them. As many men continued to serve into the early 1920s while the Army reconstituted itself, the lists were updated throughout this period, and records can be found for 1918–1925, as well as for 1939.
‘The majority of soldiers received their papers and returned them’
Accessing The Records
Some Absent Voters Lists are available online, through subscription or free websites, and others are held in paper form in record offices or
libraries. A guide to known surviving lists for 1918, and where they are located, is on The Long, Long Trail website at bit.ly/absentvoters.
Ancestry has Absent Voters Lists for the London Boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Lewisham, Southwark,
Tower
Hamlets and Wandsworth; and also for parts of Bedfordshire, Birmingham,
Dorset, Glasgow,
Perth and Kinross, and Tyne and Wear. These cover 1918–1925, with a few for 1939: ancestry.co.uk/search/ collections/ukabsentvoters.
Findmypast has an extensive collection of lists held by the British Library, and you can check what’s available at findmypast.co.uk/ articles/britain-absent-votersconstituency-list. They date from 1918–1921, but do not include all of the lists for all of those years. Meanwhile, thegenealogist.co.uk has the 1918–1919 list for Dorset within its ‘Polls & Electoral Rolls’ collection. In addition, the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland (PRONI) has the lists for Co. Armagh and Co. Derry/Londonderry available free at bit.ly/ NIabsentvoters.
Although many Absent Voters Lists don’t survive, others have simply been misplaced – so if you can’t find one listed, try the local record office or library. Failing that, a request to the local authority might locate one, although bear in mind that authority boundaries and names may have changed in the past century. Let Chris Baker, author of The Long, Long Trail website, know if you do find a new one via
facebook.com/longlongtrail or
twitter.com/1418research.
If you locate your relation on an Absent Voters List, you can use the Army number on the roll, with his surname, to find a Medal Index Card or other records, and flesh out his service. Unit War Diaries, on Ancestry at bit. ly/anc-ww1-diaries or The National Archives’ website at bit.ly/wardiaries, may also help. Some numbers even have a letter prefix that can identify the type of unit that a soldier served with.
‘Local authority boundaries and names may have changed’
PHIL TOMASELLI is a military historian whose books include Givenchy in the Great War (2017) and Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors (2011)