The 1939 Register

I'm coming rather late to this thread but do agree with Mike and, no, it's not like shoplifting - more like tasting the promotional free samples before deciding whether or not to buy. Many of us have used the Ref numbers in Advanced Search to extract more (free) information from the (free) Previews because we quite properly thought FMP had intentionally provided that very explicit functionality for just that type of searching, so we were not exploiting any loopholes. If that is not what FMP intended then they got something wromg in the programming and/or underestimated the ability of their core market of family historians to use a simple interface before deciding not to buy.

Either way, they first suppressed the Ref numbers to constrain our searching, so we used the URLs instead, but they have now gone further and encrypted the URLs. The old-style URLs still work but cannot be deduced from the new-style gobblydegook. A geeky way of extracting the Ref code has been noted (as long as it remains available) but the Advanced Search offers yet another explicit option of searching for all other open persons in the same household as one named person that we have found - unless FMP decide to cripple that functionality as well. I'm wondering if it really is about sales or whether FMP are trying to close a vulnerability that the Piece and Item numbers might, in the wrong hands, be used to hack into the Register pages and/or details of closed records, the ramifications of which would be very significant indeed.

I'm sure many purchasers are pleased with their findings while for many of us the 1939 Register doesn't live up to the hype. My own experience is that most household Previews are as I expected them to be, so I need not buy. But it can be a satisfyingly challenging exercise. I used the gender, marital and DOB filters in Advanced Search to confirm that a person transcribed as ~??? was my grandmother, so did not buy. And I used similar filters to locate a relative whose married name had been badly mistranscribed; it was sufficient to know who she was living with and the associated closed record is probably her infant child who will not be opened in my lifetime, so again I did not buy.

Peter suggested in post #10 that FMP might be seeking to recover its investment from the general public rather than family historians. He might be right. FMP have just junk-mailed my town with postcards asking "Who lived in your house on the eve of war? Your town in 1939" but have totally missed the fact that over 75% of today's town did not exist in the pre-war village, and have compounded that ignorance by using a picture of a very modern "landmark" building on the Marina (aka the now-demolished power station that the Germans never bombed because it was their "landmark" for turning right to attack Bristol).

 

Interesting Martin B

 

I had an address search yesterday for the house of my parents first marital home. They married in June 1941 and as far as I can tell from maps of that era, the house was not there in 1938. So the 1939 address search revealed that the houses existed then and besides the the name of the family then living at number 13, I found some neighbours that I recall from the early 1950s. I was 9 years old when we moved from Manchester to Macclesfield in Cheshire; quite amazing that I recalled the names of the neighbours which has triggered many childhood memories.

 

Yes I had quite a bit of fun second guessing the names of neighbours recalled all these years later. The interesting thing was we did not move in our Birmingham Municipal House until 1946 (we had been rehoused during the war in an Old People's bungalow after our house had been destroyed in the bombing) so in essence I was seeing who lived in the row (6 houses set back with a green in front and we lived at the second house from the left as viewed from the street) in 1939.

Not too surprisingly the neighbours left and right were the same names as I recall still being there in 1946 and even checking across the street I could immediately conjure up faces from surnames. I was 6 going on 7 when we moved in and Mom was heavily pregnant and my youngest sister was born at home in 1946. A neighbour's daughter was assigned to take me and my 4 year old sister for a walk during the event whilst her Mother was on hand to assist the midwife.

I could recall all the names and visualise not only the parents (as they were to me) but especially their children, most of whom were much older than us. It was a time when neighbours knew neighbours, and if anyone died there would be a door-to-door collection and for a birth, someone would bake a cake. Within 30 minutes of any event of note at any house in the road, everyone would be in the know.

 

Hi Bob, we have been away on holiday, so I am just catching up with everyone's thoughts about the 1939 register before I venture forth to search. I watched the video on FMP and thought that the tool they were using was a small iron to smooth out the creases in the paper, so making it easier to scan. Please forgive me if this has been covered later on in this post as I am only on page 2 of 8.

 

Well done Sue, great detective work

 

Thanks Peter, I haven't seen these before, highly amusing.

 

So quite a mixed reaction to the 1939 register, I have read all 8 pages of comments, thank you everyone. This afternoon I will have a look at it and see what I can find, hope that I will be and not or or .

 

Heather in the time interval I had almost forgotten the posting never mind the video content. However, from memory it seemed to me like an portable optical scanner -whether or not using OCR to convert to text (which as handwriting Peter thought unlikely and I now tend to agree) being another matter - but your observation that they may well have been ...'dashing away with the smoothing iron' ... could be equally plausible.

 

Not afraid to show your emotions Heather

 

I searched the 1939 Register to try to uncover relatives of someone I was looking for. In the preview I quickly discovered that his mother had an unusual name. I believe I have since put together a consistent family tree and believe the individual I was looking for may still be alive (albeit living under an alias).
But the problem is:
If he is still alive, his record in the 1939 Register should still be officially closed. So I should not have been able to find an entry in the 1939 Register which enabled me to piece together the family tree.

 

The individual is shown as born in 1927 (which is correct).

My dilemma is that if the individual is really dead, my reconstructed family tree is wrong. In which case I would not want to pay to open the record......

 

Open the record,it may well reveal something......one way or the other.

 

I well recall an occasion many years ago and still fairly new to family history research when someone suggested I had taken a wrong turn accepting a wrong ancestral line, and gave proof this was so. I was loathe to accept the facts presented because it went against what I believed and with which I was comfortable. But the thought the other person might be right hung heavy also and so I back-tracked and checked it out and sure enough, found I had indeed incorporated the wrong ancestor. It took a long time to put right, involved me in quite a few mea culpa apologies with new contacts, before I was finally on the right track. The moral of the story is always check out facts even if they run contrary to what you believe; the truth will out eventually.

 

As I do a one-place study, I found myself looking at these this morning, assessments of how FMP has managed the 1939 Register
Do FMP and TNA Pass Muster
1939 Register - Helping you steer a path through the data minefield which also covers the thorny issue of fair usage and copyright

 

Dear Mary

There is a lot of truth in what you say and I think my "agree" doesn't do you justice.

At the moment my Swiss Credit Card Issuers are denying FMP Access to payment.

I assume that the new "safe payment" issues are responsible as I tried to buy credits for the 1939 Register and access was denied.

However, access was also denied by my Swiss Card Issuers when my monthly world subscription came up for renewal. For more than 12 months I have renewed it via FMP UK as I have a better exchange rate.

The last renewal however was however carried out by the US Site but luckily my cautious Swiss Card Issuers again denied Access. I guess FMP UK thought they were being over clever!

I wrote to them saying that I lived in Europe and would only do transactions with UK.

They replied, telling me how to do this and that I must ensure that I renewed though UK!!! FMP UK has been debiting my credit card for over 12 months!!! The usual warning was issued that I should check out my credit card details although they have been debiting my card for over 12 months.

I am afraid I lost my temper and told them that when they had come to their senses, I might renew my subscription.

I have read numerous posts about dissatisfied customers receiving answers to their questions that have no bearing on the matter on hand.

I am about to take a back seat and wait until things improve - if they ever do.