Genealogy Chat

My Great Grandparents both have anomalies on their birth certificates that are puzzling me.

My GGrandmother, Emma Sarah Edworthy, was born on 6/11/1885. Her birth certificate gives her DOB as 23/11/1885. Emma's father was a navvy and, around the time of the birth, the family moved from Southampton to Wrexham. Fearing they'd be in trouble for registering the birth late, they lied about the date on the certificate.

Emma's husband was William Thomas Davies. His parents married on 10/2/1883 and he was born 11/2/1883. His birth certificate gives this DOB, but his birth was registered on 1/5/1883... 11 weeks after the birth!

Were there penalties for late birth registration in the 1880s? Would Emma's parents have been OK if they had given the correct DOB or would William's parents have got into trouble for registering late?

Hi Linda,

I believe there were and still are penalties for late registration. I don't think the penalties can have been too harsh though as my grandfather was born in December 1899 and his birth wasn't registered until April 1900 some four months later. My g-grandparents had seven children altogether and they didn't manage to register any of them within the six weeks that is usually allowed.

Caz

The 1837 Act provided..

For births registered late, after 42 days but before 6 calender months.

Five shillings to the Registrar and two shillings and sixpence to the Superintendant Registrar who was also required to sign the register.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~framland/acts/1836Act.htm

Chris

That's interesting Chris.

That explains why so many of the certs I have are signed by both the registrar and superintendant registrar. I had wondered why that was. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Caz

Just because you send off to the GRO for a birth rego'ed say June 17, and back comes a certificate saying the birth occurred Feb 25, it doesn't necessarily mean there was a late registration. The birth could have been registered as Tom Davis on April 1, and when they got round to reading it, realized they wanted it rego'ed as Thomas Davies, so they rerego'ed it with their proper names on June 17. Nothing's happened late. Also, there'll only be one entry (for q2) in the GRO index, I think.

Thank you for your replies....

This was definitely a late registration, no doubt about that. the certificate, however, was only signed by the registrar and not the superintendant... so maybe they got away without paying!

RE mgnv's post. I think the cert in that case would be annotated to show such a change of name, if it was/is even possible.

I'm sure the original would be annotated - but the GRO doesn't have the original - so it's really a question of whether that info was even conveyed to them, since they only get stuff at the end of the quarter.

Any amendments, re-registerations etc would be forwarded to the GRO, so the copy the local register office had & the GRO copy would be the same.

The question I was dealing with was what happens in the following situation. I rego my dad's death, get home and notice they've spelled his name Johnstone with an e stuck on the end, so I turn right round and get them to cross out the e, so it now reads Johnston, as it should.

Ten weeks later, at the end of June, what gets sent to the GRO?

Obviously, they'll have the Johnston death, but would they also have the incorrect Johnstone death too? And also would they index stuff they know is incorrect?

mgnv,

from what I understand from talking to the GRO corrections department any corrections made to a cert after it has been issued will be noted on their copy. Any future copies of the cert issued after the correction will contain the original information and the note of the correction. I am not 100% sure that would apply in the case of a single letter spelling error but the lady at the GRO definitely said ANY correction so I think it would.

Caz

Caz, thanks for sorting me out.

My dad's death cert had his date of bith recorded incorrectly. The registration was done by the coroner, and he made a mistake. The GRO entry was corrected and a new cert issued, The original date still appears on the certificate (it can't be changed) but there us a note at the bottom saying it was corrected to dd/mm/yyyy by the superintendent registrar on the authority of the coroner.

My own marriage certificate is correct, but both our names are spelled incorrectly in the GRO Index. The GRO have now corrected this, on the original, by way of a note. Obviously you can't see this on any of the images such as those held by Ancestry as the amenment was made after the original was microfilmed.