Electoral Registers have been a legal requirement since 1832, listing everyone who was eligible to vote in national and local elections. They record the names of people who registered to vote. However, just as today, not everyone who was eligible to vote registered.
The lists created annually were of people who were eligible to vote and include their reason for eligibility, such as their residence or ownership of a property. Until 1918, the right to vote was closely linked to property ownership. The details in the registers may vary slightly, but in most you will find a combination of the following information; name, address or abode, nature of qualification or a description of property, name and description and residence of landlord or other person to whom rent is paid, and occasionally occupation or age.
They are arranged by electoral division, polling district and then alphabetically, either by street or by voter, and they were published for national elections from 1832 onwards. No registers were compiled at all between 1916-17 and 1940-44. There are separate volumes for each electoral division per year or half year and the period during which each register was effective varied.
The format of each register can vary depending on the constituency or the year of the register, The normal arrangement is in address order; ie: within the register for each polling district, streets are listed in alphabetical order and properties within them are listed in sequence which is not always the same as in numerical order. Remote rural areas are not susceptible to a street arrangement of the registers and in such cases voters are normally listed in alphabetical order of surname within the smallest unit of local administration - parish, community or townland.
Over time electoral divisions changed boundaries. Norfolk was divided into different electoral division arrangements; in 1845 just two areas, East and West; other changes in 1869, 1886, 1918, 1949, and 1971; from 1974 onwards, 7 divisions, North Norfolk, Breckland, Broadland, South Norfolk, Great Yarmouth Borough, King's Lynn West Norfolk Borough and Norwich City.
