National Registration at Bedford

Town Hall and entrance to St. Paul's Church, Bedford 1904 [Z1306/10/58/6]

Thursday 19th August 1915: The effort to collect NationalRegistration Forms continues. In Bedford fifty enumerators have been carrying out the task. Each enumerator has to enter in a book the name, address and gender of each person who has received a form, and the dates on which they were delivered and collected. No cases of attempted evasion have been reported so far, although a handful of individuals were determined to deliver their own forms directly to the Town Hall. A surprisingly large number of people were visiting Bedford just for the weekend. Many of these had to apply for forms locally as many officials elsewhere in the country refused to give them out to anyone who was expecting to be away from home. The registration office was kept open on Sunday afternoon for their benefit.

Once the forms have been received they are taken to the Town Hall where about a dozen volunteers are helping with the preliminary processing. The duties involved in compiling the Register include counting the forms for both men and women, checking the books, preparing summary and totals, transmitting the forms of non-residents to other areas, classifying primary occupations, making out certificates of registration, and recording secondary occupations. The final result will be separate registers for males and females in alphabetical order of occupations. Forms for men aged between 18 and 40 will be copied and sent to the O.C. Regimental Depot.

Source: Bedfordshire Times 20 August 1915