Chris, Your assumptions in your NHS numbers e-mail are quite correct - your father's, your mother's and your own National Registration Numbers were those allocated on 29th September 1939 as part of a national activity - before your younger brother was born. If there was anyone staying with your family that night they would have been allocated "4" etc. The 3 digits just indicate that your household was the 116th registered in the area DEBE Looking at the letters and based on my own and my wife's Identity Cards I surmise that WBG was the Looe, Cornwall postal area and a 4th letter referred to a parish in that area. Similarly WBM was the Liskeard, Cornwall postal area. Perhaps it is therefore safe to assume WB had been allocated to the County of Cornwall. There is a mass of genealogical information in these 4 letters - where people were on 29th September 1939 - and it would have been a matter of 3 weeks after the first evacuations, and mobilisation would also have been in hand. Is there any source from which this registration information can be obtained? To build one up from scratch for the 4 letters would be a near impossible task but the first 2 letters would be relatively easy - assuming my assumption is correct - any "WB"'s would be living in Cornwall. Some larger counties may have had more than one set of letters, while small neighbouring counties may have been combined. I hope I am not being fool-hardy but I will start an index of the first 2 letters with:- WB Cornwall Any additions? - remember this refers to addresses for the registration on 29/9/1939. If people wish to give fuller information - that is the 4 letters I will index them but remember they must have originated in the format ABCD 123/4 - the ones created on 29/9/1939. I would suggest that e-mails containing only information on specific National Registration Areas be sent to me on familytree.henwood@btinternet.com rather than to sog-uk@rootsweb.com and that the latter is only used for general comments on the subject. David Henwood PS Let me know if anyone else is already doing this or if there is already such an index. PPS Brian, I hope you may be a contact for GENUKI which, I believe, would be the appropriate host for such an index. ----- Original Message ----- From: <chrisat53@tiscali.co.uk> To: <sog-uk@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2014 9:21 AM Subject: Re: [SOG-UK] NHS numbers > My card, which I also still have, shows DEBE116/3. My father was /1, my > mother > /2 but my brother, born in 1944, has an entirely different number. It > seems > when they were first issued that family received the same basic number for > the > address with each member numbered /(?). > > > > Chris Stupples > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > SOG-UK-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message >