Ancestors of Britney Spears and David Beckham go online in workhouse records

The records stem from workhouses, parish registers, electoral rolls, wills, school admissions, non-conformist churches and divorce courts, stretching from the 1500s up to the early 20th century.

The London Historical Records have been digitalised and put online by Ancestry.co.uk, the database that already holds births, marriages and deaths indexes and other records.

It is estimated that about 165 million people around the world will have an ancestor mentioned among the 77 million documents in the London records. They will be particularly useful for those seeking information from before the 19th century, when organised civil registration of births, marriages and deaths and official censuses was introduced.

As well as historical figures, among the many celebrities whose forebears feature in the records is Harry Potter author J K Rowling, whose great-great-great-grandfather, William Richard Rowling, appears in the Mile End marriage register for 1872.

The marriage of David Beckham's great-great-great grandparents is also listed, as is the ancestor of actress Patsy Kensit, Thomas Kensit, who can be found in the Shoreditch baptism records of 1815.

Britney Spears can trace her London roots back to relatively recently: her great-grandfather, George Portell, married in Tottenham in 1923.

Lists of "lunatics" are among the copious records from London Victorian workhouses, the homes for impoverised workers chronicled by Charles Dickens, which go online today.

The remaining records, which cover most of the greater London area, are scheduled to go online over the next year.

Until now, most of the capital's records have been housed in the London Metropolitan Archives, in Clerkenwell, under the wing of the City of London Corporation.

The Corporation's own records are housed in the Guildhall Library. Both date back to medieval times.

While the public is theoretically allowed free access to all the records, many older ones are not available easily because of their age and are kept in special storage. Online access to Ancestry.co.uk is free for 14 days but is a subscription service thereafter.

Josh Hanna of Ancestry said: "We estimate that half of the British population will be able to find an ancestor in this collection, which pre-dates civil registration and censuses, and documents the history of a great city and its people, their birth, poverty, fortunes, faith, education, marriage and death.

"No city in modern history other than London can claim to have been the capital of such a far-reaching empire, which really is why this collection is of such significance to British people but also to many others around the world with ancestral ties to England." Dr Deborah Jenkins, of the City of London's archives department, added: "Not only will this mean that millions of people will be able to access this resource from the comfort of their own homes all over the world, it also ensures that we will be able to support the long term preservation of the documents and provide fast access to researchers who visit our sites."