Rare Welsh records revealed on web
A tranche of historic Welsh records has been published on ancestry.co.uk.
Digitised from material held by West Glamorgan Archive Service, the largest of the three new collections contains five million electoral register entries from the Swansea area spanning 1839-1966.
The fully searchable registers provide the names and addresses of voters across the region, with earlier entries featuring notes on each person’s eligibility to vote and property ownership.
The electoral registers are accompanied by two further datasets relating to South Wales, including 148,000 records from the Poor Law unions of Gower, Neath, Pontardawe and Swansea (1836-1916), and 100,000 gaol records from the counties of Glamorgan, Carmarthenshire and Breconshire (1877-1922).
The latter collection also features a handful of mugshot albums compiled by Swansea Police Station, enabling family historians to see their felonious forebears up close.
This ranges from Birmingham-born John Meyler, who was sentenced to hard labour for stealing a jacket, to a snap of Swansea woman Dorcas Carr, who was arrested for being drunk and disorderly 29 times in eight years.
Speaking about the photograph albums, Ancestry’s senior content manager Miriam Silverman said it was “extremely rare” to obtain such a detailed set of records.
“Whether you’re looking to find more information about a crime in your family history or discover more about some infamous criminals, these all help add colour to Glamorgan’s past.”