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Description
5,400 volumes of evidence on private bills, relating to roads, railways, canals and other public works, form the basis of this index. The dataset lists names, occupations, and other information about people who gave evidence, extracted over a 10-15 year period in the 1980s-90s. It is provided by The National Archives under the OGL-UK-3.0 license.
Use Cases
Genealogical research based on witness names and occupations mentioned in the description.
Historical analysis of professions involved in private bill legislation based on listed occupations.
Linking individuals to specific infrastructure projects like railways or canals based on the evidence volumes.
Studying the social history of public works development through witness demographics.
Strengths
Index derived from 5,400 volumes of primary source evidence.
Covers a long historical period starting from 1835.
Includes specific witness details like names and occupations.
Limitations
Data may contain inaccuracies and inconsistencies as noted in the description.
Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
Provenance
Source
The National Archives, Parliament’s Archive Collections.
Collection Method
Information was extracted from archival volumes over a 10-15 year period in the 1980s-90s.
Time Range
1835 onwards.
Freshness
Last updated 2026-06-04 16:31:28.132797; freshness should be verified.
Geography
United Kingdom (implied by source).
Data is provided in XLS format. The access information in the referenced guide is noted as out of date.