The Time of Birth Problem

Astrologers in the USA must have a much easier time than their counterparts in Britain.
Times of birth are routinely recorded in the USA. As far as I know, this has never been the case in the UK, unless one is born into aristocracy or to parents with excellent memories, or an interest in astrology.

I noticed, when writing previous posts about favourite artists, how frustrating it is not to know even an approximate time of birth. I can only imagine what professional astrologers must feel when presented with a client who has no knowledge of their birth time.I'm pretty sure that in more recent years parents with an interest in astrology will have started to note carefully the time when their offspring enters this planet. For folks of my own generation though, chances of this were slim to negligible.

R.H. Naylor, a British astrologer of the last century, was the first to publish a Sun sign column. I wonder if his clients' lack of full birth data frustrated him so much that he decided to find a method of bringing astrology to the public without the need of birth times. This is not what we are told by Wikipedia, however. They were not privy to his innermost thoughts on the matter, though !

From Wikipedia:
"In 1930 Naylor, an astrologer, was claimed by his newspaper to have predicted the crash of the R101 airship. This led to pressure on Naylor to come up with a simplified system of astrology suitable for a newspaper column. After some experimentation, Naylor hit on using the sun signs (also called star signs) and called his column Your Stars."

It seems clear that if times of birth had been routinely recorded in Britain, "proper" astrology would have had a better chance to flourish there in the past. As it is, Britain has still managed to produce some world class astrologers such as C.E.O. Carter, Alan Leo, John Addey, and, of course, today's crop of internationally known names.