* Birth certificate not found at GRO England

[davidf]

Hi all,

Changing angle slightly and trying to get a "no trace letter" for the birth. I call the GRO office and they say they don't do this. Seems odd to refuse as I am paying for the service. Has anyone else come across this?

Regards
Eleanor

Depends whether you need a formal "No Trace Letter" or just notification that no trace can be found.

On the GRO FAQ pages:

FAQ 3.

Full certificate without a GRO index reference supplied
(if customer requires the GRO to index on their behalf a fee of £3.50 is charged)

FAQ 4.

Please note that we will retain a fee of £4.00 (for certificate orders) to cover administration costs incurred if we are unable to find a record of the event you have requested.

If you apply on-line they will have to get back to you, either with the certificate or something saying "we can't find it, we're keeping the £3.50 search fee and a £4.00 admin fee and you will receive the balance back on your credit card". Is the latter "good enough" as notification of "no trace"?

A number of years ago (pre COVID) I was attempting to find an illegitimate birth registration (1953) where I suspected that the details had been fictionalised. I had a strong inkling as to what the fictitious name might be and found such a name in the index and applied via GRO, citing the full reference. I later got my money returned (less the then current admin fee) - "not found".

Dear Sir Or Madam,
Thank you for your order as detailed below.
Birth Certificate: Ennnnn XXXXXX born in MANCHESTER
We have been unable to process your application, please refer to the paragraph below.
There is no trace of the above mentioned person at the reference you quoted.
A refund of £7.50 has been credited to your account via Worldpay.
This is the fee you paid less any administrative costs incurred by the General Register Office in processing this application. Details of fees can be found at: Registration Services - Ordering Service https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/cert ... o_know.asp
Any personal information you provide to us will be handled in accordance with data protection legislation. Further information on how we process your personal information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ion-notice
Yours sincerely
Certificate Production
Civil Registration Directorate

I replied

Dear Sir
I have received the following from you today ("no trace of the above-mentioned person at the reference you quoted") and am confused.
I have checked on-line sources for this birth and its birth reference (double-checking in case my brain is "seeing" something different to what my eyes are actually seeing!)

The title of the page seems to indicate I have the correct registration period: October, November, December 1953
The last line seems to indicate I have the correct name and registration district and volume/page: XXXXXX, Ennnnn; (Mother: XXXXXX); Manchester 10e YYY

1. Have I applied in accordance with the details on the on-line copy of the Index (Am I unable to see my own transcription error in my order)?
Or
2. Is the record missing?
Are the Birth indices "wrong" - if so how might I find this individual's birth?
or
Is the register record "Q4 1953 Manchester 10e YYY "Missing" - if so what can be done to find a proxy for the missing page?
or
Is the record withheld? - if so why? Might the individual have been adopted?

Yours faithfully

They replied:

Thank you for your enquiry.

As previously advised, we have been unable to locate the entry you requested, as the reference you found in the indexes is incorrect. It appears an error was made when the indexes were compiled.

Please note, I have viewed the entire page 342 and there is not a birth entry in the name Ennnnn XXXXXX.

If you are able to supply the exact date and place of event, you may wish to place a research order. We will search the birth indexes of England and Wales over a period of three years.

We are only able to search if the year, place of event and full name of the person is provided.

Additional information may be included which will help us identify an entry.

If the search is unsuccessful, we will contact you to advise an entry cannot be found and a refund will be issued. This is the fee you paid less any administrative costs incurred by the General Register Office in processing this application. Details of those fees can be found at: https://www.gov.uk

I hope this is of assistance to you.

Should you have any further questions or concerns please contact us directly via our online contact form and we will be happy to help you.

Regards

I then applied to the successor Registration District. I got an email saying "please call us" (ah ha, I thought, perhaps this is an adopted person - but I should still be entitled to the original certificate, which would have "adopted" written in the right-hand margin but without the adopted details).

The telephone call was "interesting"

• Looks as if Ennnnn XXXXXX (listed as the child) is actually the mother (how that happened is not known)
• The surname for Ennnnn XXXXXX had then been miss-registered - should be XXXWXXX
• Daughter (b Q4 1953) is YYYYYYYY YYYY XXXWXXX
• Father was on original birth registration but was not married, (but did subsequently)
• dd-mm-69: daughter was re-registered to put the father on the registration and certificate and to use the Father's surname
• The manuscript amendment in the Q4 1953 register index (Manchester 10e ZZZ) was miss-transcribed on FreeBMD as xxxxxxxxxx
• The Registrar got onto what was going on due to there being 6 names on that page not 5.

The Local Registrar return my fee - in full!

Would the replies above from the GRO have been adequate as a "No trace Notification"?

David

[AdrianBruce]

As previously advised, we have been unable to locate the entry you requested, as the reference you found in the indexes is incorrect. It appears an error was made when the indexes were compiled.

I doubt I still have the mail from the GRO about one of my applications which is framed in a similar fashion. But basically, for anyone who desired to understand things, I believe that their statement equivalent to "we have been unable to locate the entry you requested" was a complete nonsense. The entry was on FreeBMD and on the current GRO indexes - it didn't just appear out of nowhere. What I believe happened was that the Local Registrar "cancelled" the registration that I was asking for, because the informant was not entitled to make the registration and the entitled person had (slightly later maybe?) made the proper registration, which was entered as a separate reg.

I therefore assume that the original reg was at the GRO, but was annotated to the effect that it had been "cancelled", and should therefore never have been indexed. Only when I asked for a copy did the GRO actually read their own notes and realised that the reg had been "cancelled" and therefore couldn't be issued. Or that's my guess... I really couldn't be bothered to confirm my guesswork - suffice it to say that the adoptive mother who initially tried to register the birth, had form in terminological inexactitudes.

I still think that the GRO response was unhelpful... They could find the entry - they weren't allowed to issue it - quite correctly. I think...

[fhtess65]

I had a similar experience just this past week - ordered a death reg based on the details found on FreeBMD after not being able to find the entry in the GRO's online index. Was told they couldn't find it.

While it's possible that whoever registered my 3rd great-grandmother's death wasn't authorized to do so, I can't find any other possible entry in the following months that would indicate someone else had registered it. I've sent them the snip from FMP's image of that page of the original GRO index. We'll see what happens.

I completely agree - giving a stock answer isn't helpful in cases like this when there are so many variables. Newer genealogists will likely give up, rather than pursuing it by contacting the GRO, which is a shame. I'm not sure my query will yield the answer I want, but I would still like an explanation as to why Sarah Taylor's name appears in the original GRO death index in the correct RD (cross referenced with her Probate Calendar entry, I know I have the correct entry), yet apparently the actual registration can't be located. I get that the GRO staff have to deal with a lot of requests, but stock replies for situations like this, while convenient, aren't ideal. And I speak as someone who deals frequently with all kinds of questions to which I could just give a stock reply, but rarely do.

<SNIP>

I therefore assume that the original reg was at the GRO, but was annotated to the effect that it had been "cancelled", and should therefore never have been indexed. Only when I asked for a copy did the GRO actually read their own notes and realised that the reg had been "cancelled" and therefore couldn't be issued. Or that's my guess... I really couldn't be bothered to confirm my guesswork - suffice it to say that the adoptive mother who initially tried to register the birth, had form in terminological inexactitudes.

I still think that the GRO response was unhelpful... They could find the entry - they weren't allowed to issue it - quite correctly. I think...

[Gowermick]

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!

How much did they adjust it by ?

Only by 12/13 days. His birthday was 18 Dec and certificate states 31 Dec
The bit about nan being fined was passed down by my father.

[AntonyM]

I therefore assume that the original reg was at the GRO, but was annotated to the effect that it had been "cancelled", and should therefore never have been indexed.

Once completed, entries don't get cancelled - what does happen (but shouldn't) is that when applying for a certificate from an entry that has later been re-registered GRO sometimes try and be "helpful" by sending the later entry instead. They are not supposed to do that, and you are entitled to a copy of the first entry, which they will then supply if challenged.

[AdrianBruce]

... Once completed, entries don't get cancelled - what does happen (but shouldn't) is that when applying for a certificate from an entry that has later been re-registered GRO sometimes try and be "helpful" by sending the later entry instead. They are not supposed to do that, and you are entitled to a copy of the first entry, which they will then supply if challenged.

How interesting... When I sent for the "earlier" certificate, the GRO responded

"We have been unable to process your application ... There is an inconsistency in the indexes which occurred when the index was compiled; we are therefore unable to trace an entry with the details supplied."

I took this at face value and afterwards managed to get a copy of the later, second, registration from the Liverpool Registration office. No father's name was present on that registration - the implied surname of the child (i.e. the mother's current surname) was Harris.

My wild guess had been that the first registration was invalid (almost certainly true) and had therefore been "cancelled". Since you just said "cancellation" doesn't happen, I tried a different tactic a few minutes ago and requested a digital download of the first index - the one that the human beings couldn't trace. And, lo and behold, the same index that had stumped the humans, worked quite happily when producing the digital download.

The earlier entry (received today as a digital download) was registered by the (adoptive) mother on 12 October 1918, with the (adoptive) mother claiming to be the (biological) mother. Father is recorded as her husband.

The later entry (rec'd from Liverpool in 2019) was registered on 31 October 1918 by the (genuine) biological mother - no father's name.

At the very righthand end of the digital download is some text where I only see the 1st 3 letters of each word but "31st" is visible - the date of the later registration.

I cannot understand why they claimed to be unable to trace the entry when the digital download system did so quite happily, using the same index values! I guess it just happened. As I said, the adoptive mother wasn't known for telling the truth, the whole truth...

[AntonyM]

At the very righthand end of the digital download is some text where I only see the 1st 3 letters of each word but "31st" is visible - the date of the later registration.

Presumably a marginal note referring to the re-registration. They get cut off the digital downloads - the one thing that makes them different to PDF/paper copies. Not many entries have such notes, but when they do they are very important !

Why they couldn't find the entry the first time though - who knows. But a good reminder that everything (almost) that GRO have are only copied records and indexes built from copies (sometimes of copies) so there are a lot of potential points in the processes for errors to creep in.

One error often made is to assume that the "old" printed index (as used by FreeBMD is somehow the definitive record - it isn't and has many errors. Nor should it match the newer GRO on-line index, as the two indexes use different indexing rules to determine how entries appear, so it is quite normal, and expected, to find that results from the two indexes don't match.

[victor]

Not all certificates reached the GRO. You can check the local registration office via ukbmd
The marriage certificates of my mother's 2 sisters are not with the GRO. Fortuntaley I guessed the church they married in and found the details on the Parish Register at the local history centre.
Some known names may not be on the birth register. I have a relative (thought she was my dads sister) born in 1906. She is not listed on the GRO and the local register office doesn't have her name so I am assuming her birth surname is different but have no idea what it is
It doesn't help when her marriage ceetificate listed her father (my grandfather) who died in 1893 and she was born in 1906.
Just bear in mind whatever is on a certificate is what the registrar was told and this is without any kind of evdence

Victor