Updated London, Poor Law and Board of Guardian Records

Updated on 16 September, Ancestry's London, England, Poor Law and Board of Guardian Records, 1738-1930 now contains 321,589 records.

Sourced from the London Metropolitan Archives, the collection includes a huge variety of different records such as:

Admission and discharge books of workhouses
Registers of individuals in the infirmary
Creed registers
School registers
Registers of children boarded out or sent to various other institutions
Registers of apprentices
Registers of lunatics
Registers of servants
Registers of children
Registers of relief to wives and children
Registers of inmates
Registers of indoor poor
Registers of deserted children

The background information given by Ancestry includes "Because the records haven’t yet been transcribed, it’s not possible to search for your relatives automatically." That's legacy text — at least some of the files are indexed. Others are available as images of the original document to browse.

They’ll help you identify which members of your family were considered poor, find out what help they received, and discover details of their everyday lives.

Checking a random sample I noticed a creed register with the notation "To Canada". I was unable to find the two young people mentioned in the home child database at Library and Archives Canada. Nothing's done and dusted!