Janet Few shares her expert advice for researching relations’ lives between 1900 and 1938
With ancestors who are closer to our own time, there is greater chance of stories, photographs or memorabilia being passed down. In the first four decades of the 20th century, the majority of adults will have benefited from compulsory education, so are more likely to have written letters, postcards or diaries that might survive. Sometimes, because we feel that we know so much already, we neglect to research these more recent family members with the same vigour as we might more distant kin. Twentiethcentury research brings with it the difficulties of larger and more mobile populations, as well as records that might be closed to view for privacy reasons, yet there is plenty of scope for investigating their lives. This was a time of enormous social change and as we develop our research, we can set the lives of these individuals against a fascinating backdrop.
The years between 1900 and 1938 saw the death of three British monarchs and the abdication of another. Would our forebears have participated in coronation celebrations, or George V’s Silver Jubilee, or perhaps they will have been part of annual Empire Day commemorations? In addition whether they were combatants or not, our family’s lives would have been dislocated by the First Word War. What impact did the 1918–1920 flu pandemic have, or the General Strike? Were they ‘Bright Young Things’ of the 1920s, or did they struggle through the Depression years of the 1930s? Perhaps we have female relatives who were part of the campaign for women’s suffrage.
Dramatic Social Change
In many spheres, life in 1938 was very different to that of 1900. There were changes in transport and communications, rising hemlines, new labour-saving devices and a greater social awareness. From 1906 poorer families could receive free school meals, the old age pension was introduced in 1908, the 1911 National Insurance Act made provision for sickness benefits, and the school-leaving age was raised from 12 to 14 in 1918. There was also better healthcare for expectant mothers, and the infant mortality rate dropped from 138:1,000 in 1901, to 53:1,000 by 1941. Men and women who were born at the end of the 1930s could expect to live over a decade longer than their parents did.
Fortunately, many records are available when tracing our
