Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, on 15 October 1862. Mr Follett had a staff of just six people and was paid £2,500 a year, at a time when the average labourer's wage was £40. At first, registration was not compulsory, and once property was registered there was no compulsion to register any subsequent transactions. Thus it was possible for the person registered as the owner of a property to cease to be the owner while remaining on the register. Serious flaws in the 1862 Act led to the Land Transfer Act 1875, which forms the basis of the system used today. However, the LTA did not make registration compulsory. A report by Sir Charles Brickdale on the system of land registration used in Germany proved influential. In 1897 the then Lord Chancellor, Hardinge Giffard, 1st Earl of Halsbury introduced the Land Transfer Act 1897, which brought an element of compulsion into the registration system. To satisfy the demands of the legal profession, the option of a county veto was offered. London County Council was attracted to the idea of compulsory registration and voted in favour of it. It was introduced in stages between 1899 and 1902 and this led to the expansion of HM Land Registry. Also at this time, the first female staff were employed and typewriters were introduced. A proposal to extend compulsory registration to Northamptonshire in 1902 was lost in committee. From 1905 to 1913 new HM Land Registry headquarters were built in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Two significant pieces of land legislation were enacted in 1925: the Law of Property Act and the Land Registration Act. Government-initiated extensions to compulsory registration were suspended for ten years, but Eastbourne (1926) and Hastings (1929) voluntarily became areas of compulsory registration. After the ten years were up, compulsory registration was extended to Middlesex (1937) and the County Borough of Croydon (1939). Plans to extend it to Surrey in 1940 were abandoned due to the Second World War. In 1925 the government forecast that the whole of England and Wales would be subject to compulsory registration by 1955, but the process took much longer. In 1940, after damage sustained in the 193rd air raid on Central London, HM Land Registry was evacuated to the Marsham Court Hotel in Bournemouth so that it could carry on its normal business. In 1950, 88 years after its creation, HM Land Registry registered its one millionth