Rural Electoral Rolls

[uncleterry]

Good afternoon,
I am researching rural southern Lincolnshire and electoral registers or rolls (pre WW2) don't seem to be available. I do realise many people changed their location often dependant on work etc, and I guess this maybe the same in other rural areas. Did they bother to register at all ? Or are the records still not digitalised yet with the originals still held at local archives ? Perhaps someone can point me in the right direction.
Best wishes,
UC

[Lesley Robertson]

There's a little bit on voting registers for Lincs on GENUKI

You may be useful to contact the Lincoln Archives.

[Pam Downes]

Hello uncleterry,

Welcome to British-Genealogy.

By coincidence, the question of the whereabouts of electoral rolls/registers for Boston which is in the south of Lincolnshire was briefly discussed at a meeting I attended a couple of weeks ago.
It does depend exactly which town(s) you're talking about but it seems that either all, or at least a large part of the Holland division of Lincolnshire, is not available online via FMP.
(Slightly off-topic, I was somewhat gobsmacked to find that Kesteven is also in the south of the county - to the west of Spalding and then down to the bottom south-west corner at Stamford, plus obviously north of that, too. Which would explain why Deeping St Nicholas only a few miles from Spalding is in the online electoral rolls because it's in Kesteven, while Spalding itself, which like Boston is in Holland. isn't.)

Electoral rolls for Boston are not at Lincoln Archives. The same person who asked at the Archives also made enquiries at Boston Council and Boston library who both said they didn't have them. I asked at the Council, probably about 17-18 years ago, and was told that the electoral rolls were in Spalding. All these years later, I'm assuming that they're held at Holland County Council (now South Holland) offices.

To the best of my knowledge, the British Library has copies of all the surviving electoral rolls. If someone is living in a town it can be laborious trying to find them even if you know their address because you have to locate the polling district, and then the ward. Once you've found them in one year it's a bit easier to find them in other years. (Provided they haven't moved addresses. )

Everyone who was 21 and over should be listed in the electoral rolls, but you will always find a few who are missing - usually because they didn't want to to be bothered by officialdom.

[Pam Downes]

Lesley - your link in post #2 doesn't work.
Did you mean
https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LIN#VotingRegisters

[Pam Downes]

Hello uncleterry,

Welcome to British-Genealogy.

By coincidence, the question of the whereabouts of electoral rolls/registers for Boston which is in the south of Lincolnshire was briefly discussed at a meeting I attended a couple of weeks ago.
It does depend exactly which town(s) you're talking about but it seems that either all, or at least a large part of the Holland division of Lincolnshire, is not available online via FMP.
(Slightly off-topic, I was somewhat gobsmacked to find that Kesteven is also in the south of the county - to the west of Spalding and then down to the bottom south-west corner at Stamford, plus obviously north of that, too. Which would explain why Deeping St Nicholas only a few miles from Spalding is in the online electoral rolls because it's in Kesteven, while Spalding itself, which like Boston is in Holland. isn't.)

Electoral rolls for Boston are not at Lincoln Archives. The same person who asked at the Archives also made enquiries at Boston Council and Boston library who both said they didn't have them. I asked at the Council, probably about 17-18 years ago, and was told that the electoral rolls were in Spalding. All these years later, I'm assuming that they're held at Holland County Council (now South Holland) offices.

To the best of my knowledge, the British Library has copies of all the surviving electoral rolls. If someone is living in a town it can be laborious trying to find them even if you know their address because you have to locate the polling district, and then the ward. Once you've found them in one year it's a bit easier to find them in other years. (Provided they haven't moved addresses. )

[/B]Everyone who was 21 and over should be listed in the electoral rolls[/B], but you will always find a few who are missing - usually because they didn't want to to be bothered by officialdom.

Well, if you're going to make a mistake, you might as well make a big one!

That last sentence was slightly incorrect.
I was going to amend it to:
It should begin 'Men over the age of 21 and over . . . '
From 1918, women over the age of 30 were able to vote.
From 1928, women had the same rights as men in that they were able to vote once they were 21.
And then realised that was wrong too, because only certain men over 21 were originally entitled to vote. (The entitlement has changed many times over the years, but possibly, apart from the one giving 18 year-olds the vote, the ones that affect us most are the Acts of 1884 and 1918 for men and some women, and 1928 for all women.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk...n-and-all-men/

Quick summary through the years
https://www.archives.norfolk.gov.uk/...-voting-rights

I've been on a BIG learning curve in the last hour!

[Lesley Robertson]

You're right Pam, (apart from the fact that I'm still using the female version of my forename )

That was a copy from the GENUKI bar, but it's a link to my Uni's library... Something to sort tomorrow - thanks for giving the correct one.

[Pam Downes]

You're right Pam, (apart from the fact that I'm still using the female version of my forename )

That was a copy from the GENUKI bar, but it's a link to my Uni's library... Something to sort tomorrow - thanks for giving the correct one.

Corrected!
I am so sorry about that. I swear that this computer writes what it thinks I should say and not what I actually type. Normally I do spot such errors, but because it was a short message I didn't properly proof-read it.
Plus I was in a hurry to correct the glaring mistake I realised I'd made re who could vote and when. Which just resulted in me making an even bigger glaring error.