false economies
Because of the fees involved, some people may be reluctant to buy certificates, but not to do so is invariably a false economy. When I started tracing my ancestry, I had a rough idea of my great-great-grandmother’s age, and found an index reference to someone of the right age in Shepton Mallet. I decided to save money by not buying the certificate and wasted ages searching through other Shepton Mallet records looking for her family, without success. In the end I bought the certificate only to find that the certificate belonged to somebody completely different. Faced with this frustration, it was only then that I broadened my search and managed to find the right reference, but this time it was in London. Even if the Shepton Mallet entry had been right, I still would have benefited by having bought the certificate at once. Many people are in similar situations and will often say ‘I’ve hit a brick wall’ when all they actually need to do is to fork out for a certificate.
OTHER USEFUL POINTERS
Until 1874, stillborn children did not have to be registered. When children died very young, you will sometimes find their death but not their birth has been registered.
Like other certificates, information recorded on death certificates will often be slightly unreliable, but none more so than on elderly peoples’ death certificates, because the informant was invariably of a younger generation and unlikely to know all the facts for certain. Doctors, care-home workers or friends can register deaths and they may scarcely have known the deceased, but bereaved children are equally unlikely to get all the facts straight.
Do not forget that death certificates can provide information on people born long before General Registration began. The death certificate of an elderly ancestor in 1837 will provide co-ordinates on your family history back in the 18th century.
If a coroner’s inquest took place, this will be noted on the death certificate. Coroners’ records are closed to access for 75 years after the event and many have been destroyed. Those over 75 years old and which have survived are usually to be found in the relevant county record office, and their whereabouts is detailed in J. Gibson and C. Rogers’ Coroners’ Records in England and Wales (FFHS, 1997). A much better way of finding details of an inquest, however, is to look in the local newspaper (see Chapter Fourteen).
Death certificates seldom provide much useful information in themselves, but they can be helpful if you are stuck.
OVERCOMING PROBLEMS
Clerical errors. The General Registration indexes were compiled by the registrar general’s clerks from copies of certificates sent in by the superintendent registrars, who in turn were receiving information from the local registrars: at each stage of the process, errors could and did creep in. If you receive a certificate that does not say exactly what you expected, this may be due to a clerical error somewhere along the line, although you would be most unwise to assume this was the case without good evidence.
Human errors. Equally, while the GRO staff do a splendid job, they are not all highly trained and can be prone to human error. If a search you requested from the Registrar General’s office comes back negative, the entry may simply have been missed. Also, although some certificates are photocopied from the original Registrar General’s copy, many more are copied out or typed and may thus contain mistranscriptions. This is seldom a problem, but it is always worth bearing the possibility in mind. If you think a certificate contains a transcription error, send it back and ask for it to be checked.
Misreading of information. Another source of trouble is that the General Registration indexes themselves contain errors. One reason for not finding what you wanted may be that a surname was misread, and thus misindexed. Write down the surname you are searching for in the worst handwriting you can manage, and then ask someone else to try to read it. If they suggest a different name, try searching under that one instead.
NON-RECORDING OF EVENTS
Sadly, not all events were recorded. Although most people voluntarily registered their children’s births, they were only legally obliged to before 1875 if specifically told to do so by a registrar. It is thought that up to 15% of births escaped registration in this period.
If you cannot find a birth, it could be because you are looking in the wrong year or the birth was indexed under a variant. But if you keep failing, you may have to accept that you are descended from ancestors who, knowingly or not, made life harder for their genealogist descendants by not registering their child’s birth.
Missing the deadline. In 1875, parents became legally obliged to register their children’s births within six weeks, and could be fined if caught not doing so. This had absolutely no effect on the rate of registration. However, thereafter, if parents missed the six-week deadline, they might register the birth but lie about the date of birth to avoid the threat of a fine.
Incorrect logging of marriages. It used to be thought that almost all marriages were correctly registered, but recently studies are showing that a great deal were never properly logged by the registrar general. However, most deaths were registered.
Unregistered babies do not stand out in the crowd, but decomposing corpses certainly would and, in any case, death certificates have been required since 1837 before burial can take place.
If you cannot find an ancestor’s birth record but you know the names and years of birth of siblings (for example, from a census return – see Chapter Six), seek the births of siblings instead. Their birth records will tell you what you need to know about your ancestor’s parents. If your ancestor was born before 1837 but had siblings born after, seek their birth records instead.
Parish registers (see Chapter Ten) are a poor substitute for General Registration records, but if you cannot find an event and have a pretty good idea where it would have taken place, try seeking a baptism, marriage or burial record instead, either in the original register or using parish register indexes such as the International Genealogical Index (see here).
DIFFERENT LOCATIONS, DIFFERENT NAMES
A mobile population. Never forget that an ancestor may have been born, married or died far from their normal home. Some areas, such as the naval bases of Portsmouth and the Thames-side dockyards, contain many births, marriages and deaths of people from all over the world. Also, remember how mobile our ancestors were – the English and Welsh registration records cover those two countries alone. If someone died on a day-trip to France or was born while their parents were stationed with the army in Ireland – or India – the event will not appear in the English and Welsh indexes.
Nicknames. A problem searchers sometimes encounter is that an ancestor was known under one name but has been officially registered under another one. Sometimes you simply cannot guess that Uncle Tom was registered as Arthur, but there are many nicknames which relate to proper names, such as Jack for James or John, Bill for William, Frank for Francis, Nancy for Anne, Ann or Hannah and so on.
Middle names. It is not always the case that people stated their middle names when they married, or indeed had them quoted when they died. Your William Frederick Smith might be registered as plain William Smith, and equally the man known all his life as Jim Hanson might have been registered at birth as James Frederick Augustus Timothy Hanson. By the same token, if you find a certificate with an absence or addition of middle names that surprises you, seek further evidence that it is the right person before you start seeking the next generation back.
WHERE