Posted 30 May 2012 - 11:35 PM
The reason why the Ministry of |Health was the responsible department was nothing to do with health. It was because the Local Government Board, the department responsible for Military Service Tribunals, was merged into the new Ministry of Health in the process of post-war reconstruction.
The reason for disposal was that the masses of paperwork involved was seen as having little further value other than for researchers of the system in principle. Therefore only the Middlesex records were retained, as an example, and depossited in the Public Record Office, now the National Atchives. Similarly, the Lothian and Peebles records were deposited in the Scottish Record Office, now the National Archives for Scotland.
Genealogy or family history was by no means as popular as it is today, so that line of research was not taken into account.
Similar action was taken concerning the records of the Conscientious Objection Tribunals of WW2 and the post-WW2 period, when all the records save those of the Midlands Tribunal were destroyed in the late 1960s. Since they concerned solely issues of conscientious objection, considerations of medical confidentiality necessarily could have played no part.
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