Family Historian User Group

However, there is a statutory right, not often advertised by registration offices, for anyone to be given access and to inspect the locally held index (but not the registers themselves) on payment of t he search fee - I think is is £18 for 6hrs access. - How would I go about getting this agreed? So...

If there is a statutory right and they are denying it you need to respond to them quoting the instrument giving that right (AntonyM can you provide details?) and if they still refuse tell them that you intend to seek a judicial review. The prospect of them being told by a judge what they have to do...

BTW my grandfather wasn’t registered either, and he was born around 1890, in the East End of London, and my father had his birthdate adjusted, so nan wasn’t fined for late registration! :D How much did they adjust it by ? The fee (not a fine, and never has been) for a late registration in 1890 woul...

Just found this statement "Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales started on 1 July 1837. Registration was not compulsory until 1875, following the Registration of Births and Deaths Act 1874, which made registration of a birth the responsibility of those presen...

Forget the 2A connection to Surrey - a birth has to be registered in the district in which it occurred, so he should have been born in Hull. It could be a simple late registration, or it could also be a re-registration (which are quite common, and much more so than genuine late entries). Most appare...

The digital download option has now been extended to cover death registrations up to 1957...

For a death in 2003, you can only order the entry as a paper certificate (£11) from GRO or from the registration office in Kensington (who hold the original register). A digital image will not be available. The format will also be different from the example posted, having changed in 1969. In additio...

There are certainly some issues with the GRO on-line index, but then there are many problems with the old printed indexes too. The main confusion seems to stem from an expectation that the on-line index and the printed indexes (as seen on FreeBMD, Ancestry, FMP etc) should be exactly the same and th...

As one of the original trial group, I've been using the digital image system since the first restricted testing - I think it was almost 2 years ago that we had the first meeting with GRO. It works really well, but as noted the test data is limited as far as deaths is concerned, hopefully that may ch...

Quite normal for churches and chapels to maintain their own registers, in addition to the civil one. Sometimes they are in an identical format, sometimes quite different (esp. RC ones)

And don't forget to include "cordwainers"...

Out of interest, my grandfather was a boot & shoemaker, and although I never met him I'm told was mortally offended if anyone suggested that he was a cobbler ( who would only repair shoes, not make them).

bormley wrote: ↑04 Feb 2022 09:53 (Registrars are not completely infallible; in a recent family death certificate, 'Cerebro' is misspelled 'Cerebo'!)

That may be the way the doctor wrote it on the MCCD (Medical Certificate of Cause of Death) - registrars have to record exactly what the doctor writes (including spelling errors !)

"As per declaration" or "by declaration" has nothing to do with the timing of a registration, it just means that the information was given at a registration office away from the district in which the birth (or occasionally death) took place. The event can only be registered in th...

I think I remember reading at the time that this was the first electronic recording of marriages, and up until this year all records were kept on paper. Don’t expect to see them online anytime soon. The real practical change is the ending of the use of marriage registers - under the old system, the...

I just spotted the surnames of the mothers are shown by their married names, and not their maiden names. GRO missed a great opportunity there to help genealogists. One of the rules of registration (in E/W) is that a person's name should always be recorded as the name "they use or are known by&...

Buchanquine wrote: ↑28 Jul 2021 19:42 ... usually when bairn was illegitimate, ...

If two names are in the informant column ( known as registration by joint informants), it always means the parents are not married, at least not to each other.

You have a normal case of a registration to unmarried parents, therefore the entry is indexed twice (under the surname of each parent). All such entries are indexed in the same way in the older printed indexes as seen on FreeBMD. In this case the mother is, or has been, married to someone else ( but...

Most districts now work like this ... The district has a superintendent registrar who has overall responsibility for registration - then below them are a number of registrars each having control of a set of registers. Each of those registrars will have a code - 1A, 1C, 1D 1Z etc. The "reg"...