In a message dated 31/12/2009 02:05:34 GMT Standard Time, bp@bpears.org.uk writes: Jeanette Heath wrote: > I wonder if anyone could give me some advice as to how to access > electoral rolls for the 1920s and 30s. I have an Arthur Johnson (born > 1896) who was living at 31 Charlotte Street, Stanley, Durham at least up > until 1927. I wrote several months ago to the local Stanley library > but received no answer. Does Gateshead Library hold these electorals > rolls as well, and would it be worth while contacting them? Jeanette: Further to Brian's answer, even if and when you track down the appropriate Electoral Rolls, you will find that for the period concerned, women did not, in general, have the vote and so would not appear on the Rolls. A married woman's husband would probably be there but with no means of telling whether he was married or single. Also, in most Rolls the electors are listed by (a) Polling District, (b) Street and then (c) by the number of the house within the street, so unless you know both the street in which they lived, and the Polling District into which that street fell, you could have to search through every street to find them. True, there are indexes to tell you which streets were in which polling districts, but they were printed at the front of the Rolls and were usually the first to become damaged and torn off through handling before the Rolls were bound up. In general, the use of Electoral Rolls is something not to be undertaken without a lot of preliminary study of what precisely they are, who was listed and how, etc. Sometimes there are Rolls for local government purposes and others for Parliamentary purposes, sometimes Spring Rolls (!) and Autumn ones, for instance, not to mention the "Absent Voters' Lists" of 1918 and 1919. Geoff Nicholson