Registrars of the West Riding Registry of Deeds

The following source list was originally available only on paper in one of the West Yorkshire Archive Service offices. It may have been compiled many years ago and could be out of date. It was designed to act as a signpost to records of interest on a particular historical subject, but may relate only to one West Yorkshire district, or be an incomplete list of sources available. Please feel free to add or update with any additional information.

Prior to the 1880s the office of Registrar was elective, with voting restricted to male freeholders having property worth at least £100. The position of Registrar was always keenly contested for since the successful candidate paid a deputy to do the work and then drew a large income from the Registration fees [by the 1840s this was around £1,500 a year]. Under the elective system the Registrar was never lower than the rank of esquire as the expense of contesting an election varied from £7000 to £20,000. The last elected Registrar was the Honourable G E Lascelles and in March 1890 the Council approved the move to pension off the elective registrar and agreed to make Lascelles an allowance of £1,500 a year in return for his retirement [See Council Minutes, March 1890].

In his place the Council appointed a Registrar of its own under the 1884 Act at a salary of £500. The administration was absorbed into the County Administration and from this time until the Registry closed the Clerk of the County Council [under the title of Clerk of the Peace] was appointed Registrar and the Registry was managed in close association with the County Legal Department, though it remained a quite separate entity.

Registrars pre 1884 were largely absent from the Registry itself and had little to do with the day to day administration and work. This fell to the deputy registrar. Very little is known about the personnel of the early Registry of Deeds. Some insights have been found during recent research of the indexes.

From 1766 to 1794 there are a series of notes and drawings written in amongst the registry entries. They reveal topical themes, evidence of personal antagonisms between the staff at the Registry, local events and even romantic aspirations. It is not clear who was responsible for the entries in the indexes and there would appear to be a number of different hands at work. Some of the images are large and very obvious. It would seem very unlikely that these would have been created as the indexes were being written as they would have been noticed by the senior clerks who checked and amended the details of the registry indexes. However, there is every reason to believe that they are written at around the same period that the indexes were compiled.

Names of some of the Registry personnel found in these indexes pages are easy to identify as they are recorded elsewhere in official documents, such as Timothy Topham who was Deputy Registrar from 1766 – 1810 and who is commemorated by a memorial in Wakefield Cathedral. Others, for example William Fisher Goodyear seems to have been responsible for checking and amending the index entries, his signature appears at the end of quires to confirm that they are correct. Both men were the target of the ‘subversive’ hands at work in the Indexes, with derogatory remarks and drawings being made about them. These include nicknames, Timothy Topham is regularly referred to as ‘Old Gropham’ (Vol.19 page 191) and elsewhere a clerk suggest that Fisher should “go home and boil your head’(Vol.18 page 13). Some of the comments made are coarse and leave little to the imagination.

Not all of the unofficial entries in the indexes are full of animosity and angst. There are a number of jokes, although the humour may be a little baffling to a modern reader. Some of the cartoons, such as the one of Napoleon and Wellington are topical. Others contain representations of Millers and Bakers, a topical theme at the time in cartoons, as well as some comical drawings of pantomime style woman (vol. 22) and profile portraits of unnamed men, possibly other clerks at the Registry. In some places there are also references to The romantic inclinations of one of the clerks who seems to have been enamoured with an Amelia Hartshore ‘a handsome woman’ and repeatedly writes her name (vol.22. page 384).

By the end of 1794 a more formalised method of registering memorials was introduced. This removed the surplus pages that had previously been used by the clerks to execute their unofficial writing. The images, jokes and frustrations of the clerks of the Registry disappear from the pages and the Registry of Deeds moved into a new phase of activity.

Registrars of West Riding Registry of Deeds

Peregrine Wentworth Edward Lascalles T B Hodgson T B Sugden 1914 Bernard Kenyon

Deputy Registrars

John Edward Dibb