Genealogy Chat

Thanks everyone for the info. Yes he was born out of wedlock, I didnt know you can register a birth again. Eagerly waiting for new certificate.Thanks again.

Given the fact that you have 2 dates - one in 1944 and one in 1947, I would think that the child was born outside of marriage - and when the parents married, the child's birth would have been re-registered to legitimise the birth. This still goes on today and I've had it happen to me in my family tree. You may want to look in the parish records for the christening - this will give you the name(s) of the child, parents, address etc.

If the birth had been registered late there would have been a note to the effect ...on the authority of the registrar general.

The most likely explanation is that the parents were not married at the time of the birth and in the absence of the father the birth would have been registered in the mothers name alone.

Later when the father returned the registration was amended to show he was the father.

The original registration would have a note attached to reference the amendment. You should be able to find the original by searching the page images but not necessarily by doing a search on sites such as Ancestry as there will be no transcription for the original index, only the amendment.

Thanks for the very interesting info Rutland Belle. That explains the different dates, as she had another child born in the same year I thought it was impossible for the mother to have two children in a matter of months. She got married in 1946, so tonight I will look for birth using her maiden name, but still its quite a big gap of 3years. Fingers crossed

I know someone who is registered in this way. There is nothing in the index on the second registration to indicate anything unusual, but on the original registration (in her mother's previous married name) the page number is altered.

Kath. x

good thinking Kath. Though I think I recall from when I was transcribing for FreeBMD that if a birth was re-registered there would be a ref to the original registration

I don't think so. I was born during the war years and registered by my mother. My dad was in France and he didn't get home till I was nearly 1yr. (they were married)

So there must be some other reason. Who registered the birth?

this is from the Clara Dixon site:-

Column 8 - Date of Registration
This is very relevant to the indexes because birth, death and marriage indexes are compiled by the date of registration NOT the date of the event ( in marriages these 2 dates are usually the same but can be very different in births and deaths). So a baby born on eg 25th November 1851 that was not registered until 2nd January 1852 would be indexed in the March quarter for 1852 not the December quarter for 1851.

In the early days the parents had 3 weeks to register in and could not register at all after 3 months. After a while this was changed to 6 weeks to register in, a late registration could be made up to a year after the birth if the superintendent took the information and signed the register too, and registration could not take place after 1 year without reference to GRO. Once the delay was this long then proof of the event had to be provided by other parties who knew of this event eg midwife or doctor or siblings alive at the time and able to recall the event. Even now, if it is not possible to provide the proof and/or the people who can attest to the truth of the event it is not possible to register and there are people walking around today with no birth certificate.

It means, therefore, that a birth registered very late could be in the indexes a whole year later or more than expected. It is also relevant in that there were penalties for late registrations that were quite severe in the beginning and rather than get into trouble parents would "adjust" the date of birth to fall within the specified time for registration. If you have a discrepancy between a date of birth on a certificate and one given on a baptismal certificate, have a look at the date of registration. If it is very close to the six weeks, it is quite likely that the parents didn't tell the truth at registration but did at baptism where there were no penalties. There were no checks on the dates of birth until well into this century.

It could have been because of the war however you could also check to see if the birth was registered just after the birth in the mother's maiden name (just in case they weren't married at the time of the birth and then re-registered after the mariage.

Kath. x

I have just received a birth certificate dated 1947, on the certificate it has when born 27 Dec 1944, in the registered column it has 11 Dec 1947. Was it normal pratice for the delay of registering a birth because of the war, or was it something else.
Hope someone can help.