Does anyone know of an online resource which will provide information on the approximate dates of Birmingham vehicle registrations? In particular, for what period was a particular prefix used; and then roughly what was the issue of the various sequences of numbers associated with it?
(It’s OG 6698 in which I am mainly interested).
Thanks for any advice.
Chris
The above question originally coincided with a useful statement from another forum member, Peter Walker, dealing with the wider question of Birmingham registration numbers. This should be regarded as the main subject of this thread and is quoted below:
We all see the reg numbers on passing vehicles, but probably few think about how the numbers, or particularly the letters, were selected. There is a qood web site,
https://www.dvla.gov.uk/histm-l/hist cent.htm which covers the official side of the story. But I don't think so many people know about the local numbering "system", if it can be called that.
From 1896 all mechanically propelled vehicles weighing over 14 tons had to be registered. After the turn of the century, the development of the petrol engine brought over 5000 vehicles on the road, and a licensing acr was introduced in 1903 for all motor vehicles, the licences being issued locally. The first number A 1 was issued by the London County Council in 1903. The letter B was used for Lancashire registrations, C for Yorkshire west Riding and so on to E (Staffordshire), and O Birmingham.
The Birmingham Motor Express Company introduced six Milnes-Daimler buses in 1904, which were numbered O 264 - 269. By 1907 the succeeding company (Midland Red) had introduced another 20 numbered O 1270 - 1291 (not O 1279, 1282, for some reason), before it decided to give up petrol buses and use horses again. It took until 1912 to try petrol buses again when 13 buses were registered O 8200 - 8212, followed by O 9913 - 9942.
In that year, rather than add another digit to the number, the authorities decided to add a second letter to new registrations, followed by up to four numbers. In Brum OA started in 1913, reaching OA 2549 by the end of year, OA 4600 by the next. Despite World War 1, the numbers grew to OA 7103 by 1916, when OB followed. Then next allocated letters were OE in 1919 and OH in 1920, then OK in 1922. OL in 1923, OM in 1924, ON and OP in 1926, OX in 1927. Then in 1928 came a foreigner, VP, which lasted for a while, after which some of the missing O-series were filled in, OF and OG in 1930, OV in 1931, OJ in 1933 and OC in 1934. Meanwhile OD had gone to Devon, OI to Belfast. OR, OT, OW to Southampton, OS to Wigtown and OY to Croydon.
This was the stage at which three letters were introduced, followed by only three numbers, starting with AOA and reaching AOP by 1935. Then came BOA etc, followed by COA in 1936, DOA in 1937, EOA in 1938 and FOA in 1939. Afrter the war, GOA followed in 1946, HOA in 1946, JOA in 1949, KOA in 1950, LOA in 1952, MOA in 1953, by which time the rate of new registrations was growing rapidly. The first step in the mid-1950s was to issues a comoplete set of the same numbers with the letters behind instead of in front.
That lasted until the mid-sixties, when suffix letters were added, A for 1963 I believe.
In the last few years we have had new systems to cope with the increase in vehicles, but you can still tell a Brummy car by the O-something letters somewhere in the registration.
Frequent visitors to Brum were AC (Warwickshire), DA and JW (Wolverhampton), DH (Walsall), DU, KV, HP and WK (Coventry), EA (West Bromwich), FD (Dudley), HA (Smethwick) and RE and RF (Staffordshire).
Peter
