Post office directories

[RobinC]

What is the best way to find who you're looking for?

[Neil Wilson]

First of all, I assume you refer to the old directory of the late 1800's and have the one you need? If not try here
As they are listed by town/villages in alphabetic order, then the Gentry and traders it should be easy if you know where the person was living, these old directories do not normally have common folk listed.

If you were referring to the old telephone directories, these are available to search online somewhere.

[Geoffers]

All that Neil has written above, plus.....

Some directories do contain a nominal index (often one for private residents and another for business), making them much easier to search than for example, electoral registers. The downside of directories is that in some, only a selection of houses in each street are picked and only head of house is listed - if this was a private residence and the name occurs frequently (e.g. Smith), then you may have some difficulty identitying an individual you want.

Directories do however remain very useful sources of information in who lived where and what services were available locally.

[Chris Doran]

Directories are available on CD or online from our hosts, as above, the Historical Directories website, Ancestry, auction sites, and a few others plus maybe sites associated with local archives, as there now seems to be a project to copy and PDF them (at any rate, our local studies library is using some such service). Telephone directories for some areas are at Ancestry. The first four sites tend to concentrate on the county-wide directories that don't list every house, whereas many archives have the local street-by-street ones that do.

Just who gets shown as "householder" is an interesting question. My gf is in London county-wide directories whereas the local directories name someone else at the same address for the same years. Obviously, it was in multiple occupation as was common, but how come he's the big cheese in one but not the other?

If you can't find your relative at any of the above places, track down and e-mail the relevant local studies library -- most (but not all) do quick lookups for free. If those avenues fail, post the details here (place only if the people may be alive), and hope that SKS can go to that archive (or a neighbouring one as some directories cross current borders).