How to look for records of... Immigration and immigrants

1. Why use this guide?

This guide provides advice on how to locate records of immigrants to England and Britain from the 13th century onwards. It also covers records which reflect government policy towards immigration over the last 800 years.

The National Archives is the archive of central government in the UK. The immigration records we hold were originally created by the various government departments that recorded the arrival and existence of foreign nationals in Britain, as well those that formulated the government’s immigration policy.

Many records of individual immigrants have been destroyed so tracing someone’s arrival can sometimes prove impossible. There is no comprehensive index of names for immigrants.

You may also wish to consult one of our other research guides on related subjects, listed in the right-hand panel of this page.

2. Records of arrival

Many of our records of immigrants are records of ‘aliens’. An alien is someone who is born outside the country and does not have English parents (before 1707), or British parents (after 1707). From 1707 English and Scottish subjects were British subjects and from 1801 Irish subjects were also British subjects. If immigrants came to Britain from the British colonies they were not classed as aliens but were simply Britons.

The Home Office established an Aliens Department in 1913 (there having already been an Aliens Office in the 19th century) and many of the records of aliens at The National Archives are from that department.

2.1 Passenger lists

There are no passenger lists for people arriving in the UK by air.

2.2 Certificates and lists of alien arrivals

HO 2 contains original certificates of arrival of individual aliens in England and Scotland, arranged under the ports of arrival. These certificates include:

• nationality
• profession
• date of arrival
• last country visited
• signature and other details

Early certificates appear to have been destroyed. However, some records survive for the following dates:

• 1810–1811: FO 83/21–22 – aliens arriving in English ports
• July–November 1826: CUST 102/393–395 – accounts of aliens arriving in the port of London
• October 1826–August 1837: CUST 102/396 – accounts of aliens arriving in the port of Gravesend

HO 3 consists of returns of alien passengers made by masters of ships under section 2 of the Aliens Act of 1836. The lists survive for the period July 1836 to December 1869 but none survive from January 1861 to December 1866.

Earlier records relating to the arrival of aliens and aliens’ accounts are in local county archives, normally among Quarter Session papers. For example, certificates of alien arrivals issued at the port of Hull from 1793 to 1815 are held by Hull History Centre.

3. Records after arrival

In some cases the Aliens Department continued to take an interest in aliens long after their arrival, particularly at times of war. With questions of national security at stake the Home Office, both during the World Wars and later, amid the heightened security threat at the onset of the Cold War, sought to keep a close eye on foreign nationals living in the UK. Our records reflect these concerns.

3.1 Entry books, 1794–1921

Surviving in series HO 5 are entry books recording the out-letters of the Home Office and the Aliens Office relating to aliens and naturalization.

HO 5 includes registers of applications for denization, naturalization and exemptions, and indexes to the certificates of arrivals in HO 2 (see above).

3.2 Alien registration cards and registers of aliens from 1914

The Aliens Registration Act of 1914 introduced the requirement for aliens, other than those from British colonies or Ireland, to register with the police. They were required to give their name, marital status, address, occupation and other details. Though we only hold a sample of these registration records, from the London area only, you may be able to find registers of aliens from other parts of the country in local record offices.

Alien registration cards of London residents

Owing to the sensitive nature of these cards, they may be closed during the lifetime of the individuals concerned or until they can be assumed to be deceased. You can make a Freedom of Information request using the link in the catalogue description.

Registers of aliens from around the country in local archives

Use the advanced search of our catalogue to search other archives (scroll down to the ‘Held by’ section to select this option) for registers of aliens. Use the words ‘registers’ and ‘aliens’ and, optionally, the name of a county or city, as your keywords.

3.3 Aliens personal files since 1935

We hold a selection of files of the Aliens Department relating to individual aliens who entered the United Kingdom after 1935. They are held in series HO 382. Some of the files relate to famous individuals.

Search HO 382 by name to locate individual files. Many contain small photographs of the subject. Significant numbers of these records are closed and sight of them is dependent on a successful Freedom of Information request.

3.4 Records of internees: First and Second World Wars

During the First and Second World Wars both sides set up internment camps to hold enemy aliens – civilians who were believed to be a potential threat and have sympathy with the enemy’s war objectives. Internees were treated differently to prisoners of war and were given more privileges.

Some of these records are of people who were interned but others are of people who were exempted from internment.

For more detailed advice on these records see our Internees guide.

3.5 Records of the London Reception Centre at the Royal Patriotic Schools

This collection details the development of policy for the screening of internees at the Royal Patriotic School (RPS) between January 1941 and June 1945. The London Reception Centre was established to process aliens arriving in the UK, to gather intelligence from them on conditions in occupied Europe, and to screen arrivals for possible enemy agents. The screening centre for men was located at Trinity Road, Wandsworth, and at nearby Nightingale Lane for women.

The files include:

• interrogations of civilians arriving in the UK from abroad (KV 2) and WO 208/3663-3748
• correspondence and minutes of meetings of the sub-committee of the Home Defence (Security) Executive set up to run the London Reception Centre at the RPS (KV 4)
• lists of categories of people to be processed by the RPS (KV 4/339)
• reports of inspection visits to the school (KV 4)
• a list of the administrative staff at RPS in May 1941 at serial 68B (KV 4/240)
• a detailed note on the history of RPS at serial 211A (KV 4/342)
• a report from March 1941 at serial 49A (KV 2/339) which summarises the Security Service view of the schools and their importance

3.6 Operation Post Reports

Operation Post Reports (OPRs) date from the late 1940s to early 1950s and were part of an initiative to investigate foreign nationals living in Britain at the onset of the Cold War.

These records, in series HO 481, are not searchable in our catalogue by the names of individuals. Instead, the series is arranged in the catalogue by alphabetical surname ranges and consists of two  sets of records which have been intermingled and combined to form one A-Z sequence. Therefore, when searching for a surname, there is usually a chance of finding it in either of two pieces. There are usually about 200-400 reports in each piece.

Scroll through the alphabetical ranges of HO 481 to locate the surname range you are looking for. Be aware of the probability that there will be two pieces covering roughly or sometimes exactly the same range.

3.7 Birth, baptism, marriage, death and burial registers, 1567-1970

Immigrants arriving from outside England or the United Kingdom were unlikely to have belonged to the Church of England. Those that retained the religion of their homeland would have had births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials recorded in non-parochial registers – where they were recorded at all.

We hold non-parochial registers, received from the General Register Office (RG 4 and RG 8). They include:

• registers of births and baptisms, marriages and burials for various periods between 1567 and 1857
• records formerly kept in the French, Dutch, German and Swiss churches in London and elsewhere (in RG 4)
• the archive of the Russian Orthodox Church in London, 1721–1927 (in RG 8), which contains more than just birth, marriage and death registers

All of the Dutch registers, and some of the French and German ones are for those countries Chapels Royal, but most are French (Huguenot) or German (Lutheran) church registers. There is only one Swiss church register.

4. Records of citizenship: denization and naturalisation

For hundreds of years, foreign nationals living in the UK have been able to attain British citizenship through naturalisation. The National Archives holds records of naturalisation up to 1 October 1986. For records since 1 October 1986 to the present you should go to the United Kingdom Visa and Immigration Service.

Denization was a legal process granting limited naturalisation to aliens. It granted a foreign national almost equivalent status of native-born Britons and provided them the protection of the law.

For more information about denization and naturalisation and advice on how to find the related records, see our research guide to records of Naturalisation, registration and British citizenship.

5. Earlier records, 13th to early 19th centuries

Searching for records of immigrants from the early modern and medieval periods involves largely speculative searches, though there were some sets of records from these periods created specifically to record immigrants or refugees of one kind or another. The earliest references to immigrants in England are in records of Chancery and the Exchequer.

5.1 Records of early-18th century German Protestant refugees

German Palatines came from the Middle Rhine region of what is now Germany, but was, in the early 18th century, part of the Holy Roman Empire. Thousands of them emigrated to England in 1709.

Embarkation lists of Palatine subjects shipped from Holland to England in 1709 are contained in a bundle of Treasury in-letters in T 1/119. Although these people were originally seeking a new life in the New World, many stayed in England. Other references to Palatines can be found in:

• the State Papers Foreign, Holland (SP 84)
• Colonial Office records (CO 5/1230–1231)

Lists of names traced in these series have been printed in WA Knittle’s Early Eighteenth Century Palatine Emigration; LD MacWethy’s The Book of Names Especially Relating to the Early Palatines and the First Settlers in the Mohawk Valley; and in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, XL and XLI.

5.2 Records of French emigres, 1789 to 1814

In 1793 the Aliens Act introduced the first official immigrant registration system. It was introduced to manage the influx of people coming to Britain to escape the French Revolution.

For letters and papers concerning French émigrés, 1789 to 1814, look in:

• HO 69, Home Office records in the series of Bouillon papers
• PC 1, Privy Council unbound papers
• FO 95, Foreign Office miscellanea, series I
• WO 1, War Office in-letters

A descriptive note about all these letters and papers, and a full list of them in typescript, is available in the Open Reading Room. There are also names in registers and on pension lists in Treasury records of the French Refugees Relief Committee (T 93) for the period 1792 to 1828. These are described in PRO lists and indexes, no. XLVI (1922).

5.3 Early Chancery records

In records of Chancery there are documents from the reigns of Henry III to Henry VIII (1207–1547) relating to:

• alien clergy – C 269/15 and C 270/17/15
• foreign merchants – C 47/35/10/41-44

5.4 Records of the Exchequer

Records of the Exchequer include various documents and records related to immigration from 1229 to 1830:

• 1229 to 1483: E 106, King’s Remembrancer: extents of alien priories, aliens etc, which covers the period Edw I to Edw IV. The series includes documents relating to possessions of laymen who were foreign subjects and accounts of fines imposed on alien clergy
• 1523 to 1561: E 179, Exchequer subsidy rolls, including names of foreigners living in the city and suburbs of London and details of the taxes levied on them
• 1207 to 1830: E 101, Exchequer accounts various, including accounts of transactions involving foreign merchants living in London. These records extend over a long period, from Hen III to Charles I – see PRO Lists and Indexes, No. XXXV, pp 103–107

5.5 State Papers

The following state papers domestic include returns of strangers in London and elsewhere from 1232 to 1603, as well as other references to aliens:

• 1547–1553: SP 10 – Edward VI
• 1553–1558: SP 11 – Mary I
• 1558–1603: SP 12 – Elizabeth I
• 1547–1624: SP 13 – Elizabeth I: large documents
• 1603–1640: SP 14 – James I
• 1547–1625: SP 15 – addenda
• 1232–1665: SP 16 – Charles I
• 1649–1660: SP 18 – interregnum
• 1649–1688: SP 29 and SP 30 – Charles II

From 1560 onwards the state papers domestic contain names of Huguenots from France and Walloons from the Low Countries who emigrated as a result of Spanish persecution.

Some lists of the people mentioned in the above records also appear in the printed Calendar of state papers, domestic, Edw VI to James I (1537–1625), Vols I to V, which each have indexes and can be searched using State Papers Online (£) (institutional subscription required – access is free on the public computers at The National Archives) and British History Online.

You may be able to find names in the indexes to the printed calendars of SP 14–16, 18, 29 and 30.

Lists of names from these records can also be found in REG Kirk, Returns of aliens in London, 1523–1603, as well as:

• names of members of French and Dutch churches in London in 1561 and 1562
• returns of aliens in London in 1571
• lists of refugees settled at Norwich, Colchester, Rye, Sandwich, Canterbury and other parts of England

Short lists of names can also be found in J S Burn, ‘The history of the French, Walloon, Dutch and other foreign Protestant refugees settled in England from the reign of Henry VIII to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes’.

Lists of denizations of refugees escaping from the persecution of Huguenots in France, 1681 to 1688, are available in William A Shaw (ed), ‘Letters of denization and acts of naturalization for aliens in England and Ireland, 1603–1700’.

5.6 Parliament or patent rolls

Immigration records can be found in:

• Parliament rolls (C 65) – these contain records of many acts of naturalisation over a long period from c.1400
• patent rolls (C 66–67) – these contain records of grants of denizations by letters patent c.1400–1844

5.7 Treasury in-letters

Treasury in-letters (T 1) contain references to refugees and other foreign people who received annuities, pensions and other payments for their support, or in return for services rendered to the Crown. These can be traced in the indexes to printed volumes of the Calendar of Treasury papers, which covers the period 1556 to 1745.

6. Records in other archives

Other archives with records about foreigners settling in the UK:

• The London Archives
• the Bodleian Library, Oxford
• Cambridge University Library
• the Huguenot Society of London
• Lambeth Palace Library, London
• The National Archives of Ireland

7. Further reading

Most of the following publications are available in the The National Archives’ library. You can visit The National Archives shop for a range of related titles.

Family history and genealogy

Guy Grannum, Tracing Your Caribbean Ancestors (Bloomsbury, 2012)

Gerhard Hirschfeld, Exile in Great Britain: Refugees from Hitler’s Germany (Berg for German Historical Institute, 1984)

Roger Kershaw, Migration Records: A Guide for Family Historians (Kew, 2009)

Roger Kershaw and Mark Pearsall, Immigrants and Aliens: A Guide to Sources on UK Immigration and Citizenship (The National Archives, 2004)

List and Index Society, General Register Office list of non-parochial registers and records in the custody of the Registrar-General of births, deaths and marriages (List and Index Society, XXXXII, 1969)

L D MacWethy, The Book of Names Especially Relating to the Early Palatines and the First Settlers in the Mohawk Valley (Genealogical Publishing Company, 1933)

The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, XL and XLI (New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1909 and 1910)

Dhoeleka S Raj, Where Are You From?: Middle Class Migrants in the Modern World (University of California Press, 2003)

Michael Tepper (ed), New World Immigrants: A Consolidation of Ship Passenger Lists and Associated Data from Periodical Literature (Genealogical Publishing Company, 1979)

19th and 20th centuries

Shompa Lahiri, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880–1930 (Frank Cass, 1999)

Lucio Sponza, Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Realities and Images (Leicester University Press, 1988)

Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley (eds), The Irish in Britain 1815–1939 (Pinter, 1989)

Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley (eds), The Irish in the Victorian City (Croom Helm, 1985)

Early Modern and Medieval periods

J S Burn, ‘The history of the French, Walloon, Dutch and other foreign Protestant refugees settled in England from the reign of Henry VIII to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes’ (London, 1846)

Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1556–1728 (Public Record Office)

Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers, 1729–[1745] (HMSO)

Peter Wilson Coldham, English Adventurers and Emigrants, 1609–1660: Abstracts of Examinations in the High Court of Admiralty with Reference to Colonial America (Genealogical Publishing Company, 1984)

Peter Wilson Coldham, More English Adventurers and Emigrants, 1625–1777: Abstracts of Examinations in the High Court of Admiralty with Reference to Colonial America (Genealogical Publishing Company, 2002)

Ian D Colvin, The Germans in England 1066–1598 (Kennikat Press, 1971)

R E G Kirk and Ernest F Kirk (eds), Returns of Aliens Dwelling in the City and Suburbs of London from the Reign of Henry VIII to that of James I (Aberdeen University Press, 1900–1908)

W A Knittle, Early Eighteenth-Century Palatine Emigration (Dorrance & Company, 1937)

Public Record Office, List of Various Accounts and Documents Connected Therewith Formerly Preserved in the Exchequer and Now in the Public Record Office: Bundles 1–603 [Henry III to George III] (Kraus Reprint, 1963)

William A Shaw (ed), Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland, 1603–1700 (Huguenot Society of London, 1911)