Though there was no 1921 census for the general population in Ireland due to the War of Independence, British military units/personnel stationed in the country were recorded as part of the England/Wales dataset. Ditto for those stationed worldwide.
The image below is the cover sheet for the 1921 census record for No 5 Armoured Car Company (ACC), Tank Corps based at Marlborough (now McKee) Barracks in Dublin. The unit had evolved from the very successful 17th (Armoured Car) Battalion and they were getting to grips with their new 1920 Pattern Rolls-Royce armoured cars at the time of the census in June 1921.
This census cover sheet is signed off by Major Douglas Henry Pratt, formerly of the Royal Irish Regiment. He moved to the Machine Gun Corps (MGC) in 1916 and then to the Tank Corps. Pratt continued to serve and was in France in 1940 leading 1st Tank Brigade. After Dunkirk, he was posted to Washington DC to work with the Roosevelt administration to supply equipment to the British, e.g. Sherman tanks.
Pratt is one of over 145k MGC personnel in the VMGCRA/Sacker database hosted by the UK National Archives, reference "SKR/DAT/IP/31975", which can be searched for via the following link :
The 1921 British military census records can be found on FindMyPast, with the Piece field being particularly useful for pinning down locations to search as entering Ireland , India, Mesopotamia etc is not an option - Country is set to "Armed Forces Overseas" :
Searching for the keywords "Tanks Corps" with the combined Pieces values for Ireland returns a list of 272 entries while "Machine Gun" as the keywords returns 848 entries.
I have left the link to FindMyPast in it's raw form so that the Piece numbers (28216 to 28133 etc) can be seen in the URL :
https://www.findmypast.co.uk/search/results?_page=5&o=lastname&d=asc&datasetname=1921%20census%20of%20england%20%26%20wales&keywords=tank%20corps&country=armed%20forces%20overseas&book=28128~28126~28125~28127~28129~28130~28131~28132~28133
A picture of Douglas Pratt
His medal set was up for sale in 2023 :
The Second in Command of No 5 ACC was Vyvyan Pope,. Ronald Lewin's book about Pope, "Man of Armour. A Study of General Vyvyan Pope CBE DSO MC and the development of armoured warfare" carries the following passage re Pope's initial impression on joining No 5 ACC :
He and Pratt would work together on the pre-war Tank Board.
Pope would also serve in France in 1940.
Pope also served in Egypt as the CO of No 3 Armoured Car Company, taking on some of the 1914 Pattern Rolls-Royces used by the Duke of Westminsters Squadron during the Tara Rescue in 1916.
Among the officers at Sollum in the 1921 census awaiting Pope's arrival was Arthur John Bather, commissioned after completing the last wartime officers course at Sandhurst.
Searching FindMyPast with Piece numbers 28111 to 28113 covering Egypt, Sudan and Cyprus returns over 14000 entries :
Under Pope's direction, Bather would find himself patrolling the desert and encouraging others, starting a chain which would ulitmately lead to the creation of the Long Range Desert Group.
Pope would be a General when he returned to Egypt in the Second World War. He was killed in an aircraft accident and is buried in Cairo.
Further Reading
