National Registration Identity Card, HJ 465021 for my dad Arthur B Henderson bearing the date stamp April 20, 1951.
Image courtesy of Deb Branson.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
National Registration Identity Card, HJ 465021 for my dad Arthur B Henderson bearing the date stamp April 20, 1951.
Image courtesy of Deb Branson.
I still have my mum’s card stamped 18/5/1943 some 6 months after I was born in Stockton. She had moved down from Newcastle so I presume her local card had to be changed. However in subsequent moves in the borough the card was stamped as a change of address. Interestingly the card was last stamped on 24/4/50 so identity cards were not abolished until well after the war.
Both my mother and father’s Identity Cards are stamped 18th May 1943 by the National Registration Office. Seems this date is an official one for every adult. They have a serial number on the back GC 056784 and GC 056786. They are green in colour. Mine was issued on 21.5. 1940 but is not stamped. The serial number is FGHD 161 6 and a buff colour.
They were declared as no longer necessary under the first, Churchill lead, Tory government.
In 1952 the Minister for Health, Harry Crookshank, announced that national identity cards were to be scrapped.
Fred, 1939 was a year of things happening quickly, Gas masks and how to wear them with testing, dire warnings to carry them everywhere even to the toilet. (now there is a thought we did eat a lot of cabbage). National Registration Cards which were not National registered at all, they were local or area and came in many colours and shapes depending on your area, we would often be checked to make sure we had them. Dad started to build our air raid shelter as Andersons were in short supply, every one expected instant air raids if war was declared. To us 10 year olds sitting the eleven plus in all the turmoil it was one thing after another, memory of particular events or things flagged if they did not seem important.
We carried the cards or I did until the day we joined up at Brancepeth just 18 and we got a pay book which was my Registration until we eventually got plastic cards with our pictures on many years later. Somewhere along the line I acquired a National Insurance Card which may or may not have been the original NR number, unless I can find the NI and the NR cards which are somewhere in a tin box it cannot be proved. When I come back from the lakes I will look.
Identity cards were abolished some time after WWII, but I understand that one’s National Insurance number (for National Health and Income Tax records) is the same as the identity card card number. Perhaps Frank Mee, or others could comment?