100 Years of Vehicle Registrations
Although it is nearly 100 years old, the British registration system is not the oldest in the world. The first proper registration system appears to have been adopted by the state of Baden in Germany in 1896 and the first country to adopt a national one, in 1899, was Holland. One distinction of the British system is that a registration issued when it started in 1903 can still be valid on the same vehicle today, though Britain cannot claim the oldest system in this respect. In the Spanish system, an original plate could be valid on the same vehicle that dates back to 1900.
Vehicle registrations were introduced under the provisions of the Motor Car Act 1903. All motor vehicles used on the roads after 1 January 1904 had to be registered with the appropriate local authority. In fact most authorities started issuing registrations towards the end of 1903. One suggestion which had been put forward prior to the passing of the Act was that cars should be given names, in a similar way to ships, rather than numbers. Fortunately, in view of subsequent growth in vehicular traffic, the government did not accept this proposal!
To facilitate the issuing of registrations, local authorities were allocated codes of one or two letters. Codes with G, S or V in them were reserved for Scottish authorities and codes with I and Z in them were reserved for Ireland. England and Wales were allocated the remaining codes. Interestingly, no special recognition was given to Wales' status in the allocation.
English and Welsh codes were allocated alphabetically by size of population. Thus, London, the largest authority, was given A; Lancashire the next largest B, and so on to AA for Hampshire, AB for Worcestershire etc until finally diminutive Rutland received FP. In Scotland the three largest authorities, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Lanarkshire, were allocated the single letters G, S & V respectively. The remaining codes were allocated using alphabetical order of authority name, e.g. SA to Aberdeenshire, SB to Argyll, etc. Irish codes were allocated by alphabetical order of authority name (I & Z were not allocated as single letters), i.e. IA to Antrim, IB to Armagh, etc.
Much recent DVLA publicity refers to A 1 as being the first registration issued. It certainly was the first one issued by London, but it is likely other authorities started issuing registrations slightly earlier than London. In order to be allocated the number A1, Earl Russell had queued all night outside the London CC offices.
It is interesting to note the codes omitted from the original allocation:
BF - standing for Bloody Fool, a then popular acronym. This was originally allocated to Dorset but was soon withdrawn in preference to FX. BF, with use restricted to three-letter combinations, was re-allocated to Staffordshire in 1960.
DD - it is understood that this was a form of alcoholic deliria, q.v. DT below. The series was commenced by Gloucestershire in 1921.
DF - an acronym for Damned Fool. This was originally allocated to Northampton, but following objections from that Council, the code NH was substituted. DF subsequently went to Gloucestershire in 1926.
DT - standing for delirium tremens. When Doncaster became a seperate county borough in 1927, the mark DT was a logical code to allocate to it.
ER - the then royal cypher. Commenced by Cambridgeshire in 1922.
SC, SF, SG, CS, FS & GS were omitted from the Scottish allocation. The likely explanation for this is the possibility of confusing the letters C & G and E and F - at this time most number plates were hand painted, sometimes rather crudely.
Each code was to be followed by a serial number of up to four
digits. Local authorities had to keep three separate registers
of vehicles; ordinary cars, "heavy motor cars" (lorries
and buses in reality) and motorcycles. Some just issued numbers
sequentially, not segregating the vehicle types. Others had segregation,
either in blocks or by using odd and even numbers for different
categories. Some used lead zeros in front of one type of number,
e.g. heavy motor cars might have numbers like AB 0123. Some had
two or three parallel systems, so there could be two or even three
different vehicles with the same numbers!
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