We have all delved into our family history, yearning to understand the lives of our ancestors but after we have found them in the births, marriages and death records we will often turn to the census records to discover where they lived. But what happens if you’ve hit a brick wall in your research, struggling to piece together the puzzle of their past because they were, somehow, not at home on census night? What resource can we turn to as a substitute?

Another scenario may be that we have found our ancestor in their home and discovered that their occupation reveals that they were a shopkeeper or small business person. What we would now like to know is where they ran their business from and discover more about the village, town or area of the city in which they worked.

If so, then trade, residential, and telephone directories can be your key to unlocking a wealth of information. Recently TheGenealogist has added a virtual library-shelf full of extra directories from the early 1900s to 1929 featuring publications covering many parts of the country.

These unassuming volumes, packed with listings of people and businesses, offer a fascinating glimpse into a bygone era. Imagine discovering the street address of your great-grandfather’s bakery, learning where your great-grandmother practised her dressmaking trade from, or even unearthing the names of your ancestors’ neighbours.

The Character Actor

One of the recently released directories covers the streets of Edinburgh as the last century was beginning. On the 9th October 1900 one of Britain’s most recognisable character actors came into the world in Scotland’s capital city. He was the youngest child and the second son of his parents Alexander and Isabella Sim and was given the names of Alistair George Bell Sim.

After several false career starts that saw him do a spell as a jobbing labourer and also as a local government clerk, Alistair Sim’s love of and talent for poetry reading won him several prizes. This led to his appointment as a lecturer in elocution at the University of Edinburgh in 1925. He also ran his own private elocution and drama school, from which, with the help of the playwright John Drinkwater, he made the transition to the professional stage in 1930.

While he may have been a late starter as a thespian, Sim soon became well known on the London stage. One period of his career saw him as a member of the Old Vic company which brought him wide experience of playing Shakespeare and other classics, to which he returned throughout his career.

By the 1940s and 1950s Alistair Sim was a leading star of British cinema with parts in films such as Green for Danger (1946), Hue and Cry (1947), The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), Scrooge (1951), The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954) and An Inspector Calls (1954). Later in his life, he generally concentrated on stage work, including successful productions at the Chichester Festival and regular appearances in new and old works in the West End making fewer films.

The Tailor and Justice of the Peace

Searching the 1901 census collection on TheGenealogist allows us to discover the family, including baby Alistair, resident in Lothian Road, Edinburgh. Alistair’s father is listed as a Tailor and Clothier.

With the census revealing the occupation of the actor’s father as a tailor we may wonder where he carried out his business. Was it from premises elsewhere in the city or did he and his family live above the shop? The easy way to discover this is to turn to TheGenealogist’s Trade, Residential and Telephone Directories. A search of this record set discovers an Alex. Sim in the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directory 1919-1920. Here it is confirmed that his place of business as a tailor and clothier is run from the address of 96 and 98 Lothian Road, so we can now make the assumption that the family lived above the shop.

We are also able to find out something more about the actor’s father from this particular search on TheGenealogist. Elsewhere in the same directory, in a section under Public Departments and sub-headed “Commission of the Peace for the County of the City of Edinburgh and Limits of the Edinburgh Police Act 1848”, Alexander Sim (Sim, Alex.,) appears on a page listing those people who were Justices of the Peace. We are also able to note that his date of appointment to the bench had been in November 1910 by referring to this record.

Another entry reveals that Alistair Sim’s father was the general secretary and organiser of the Scottish Veterans’ Garden City Association, with their offices being at 2 Castle Street in Edinburgh.

One other record that we can easily find in these directories is for his phone number, which was Edinburgh Central 6344 and it had been registered to his premises at 98 Lothian Road. This would be very useful if we could travel back in time and use the telephone to give our actor’s father a call, but it is still a fascinating revelation that Mr Sim had a phone installed at his address in Lothian Road in 1919.

Trade, Residential & Telephone directories are so much more than useful census substitutes to find our forebears’ address. They can reveal an ancestor’s business address and can be fountains of extra information when that ancestor held other positions in society, such as being listed as a Justice of the Peace or the Secretary of a charity etc. Both of which we have found were the case for Alistair Sim’s father, Alexander.