Genealogy Chat

Does the birth certificate ever note a deceased parent ....eg.mother died in childbirth or is a married father's death before child's birth ever noted on a child's birth certificate?

Gwyn

Column 6 - Father's Occupation
This is the occupation of the father. Column 4 and Column 6 go together. If there is no father shown in Column 4 then there will be no occupation shown in Column 6. If there is a father shown in Column 4 but a line drawn through Column 6 it means that the father did not have an occupation or perhaps was not employed at the time of the registration or the informant did not know what father did.

Only paid employment is shown and, as in the census, men only had legal and respectable jobs so you wont find pimp or burglar! On the other hand, before this century they probably had a more meaningful occupation than the ones you get at present - blacksmith, shepherd, coalporter or whatever rather than company director (owns his own windowcleaning company) or office administrator (files bits of paper). Informants can be modest about occupations as well aggrandising them.

Labourer might mean totally unskilled - heaving stuff about in a market - but could equally mean a quite specific skill e.g. many 'ag labs' (agricultural labourers) were quite specialised workers such as hay trussers.

Especially in the past, occupations would show status such as "of independent means".

If a father of a legitimate baby had died before his baby was born then Column 6 would read something on the lines of "Railway worker (deceased)."

from http://home.clara.net/dixons/Certificates/births.htm#COL6

Roy

Hi Gwyn,,

When my great grandma died in childbirth in 1861,my great grandad registered the birth of the child and it said my grandmother's name but underneath her name it said Deceased..

Thank you Roy.
So a deceased father is noted, but not a deceased mother ??

I have birth certificates for 2 girls ( different families ) both of whom were registered by their fathers after the mothers had died.
One father was married. One was not....no mention of the mothers' deaths.

Ah.... You posted before I could answer, Sue.
So sometimes a death WAS noted then... Thank you for that.
Gwyn

Gwyn, If you check out the link i posted for you, you can read the entire document, and save me the time :-D

Roy

Well it was on my grand aunt's birth cert but the baby died at 6 weeks old as she had to to live with great grandads sister and husband.
and they had no children of their own.

sorry had to edit the post.

Hi
My later father-in-law was born 4 month after his fathers death and yes it was noted i.e. his job then deceased

Hi
My later father-in-law was born 4 month after his fathers death and yes it was noted i.e. his job then deceased

Hi
My later father-in-law was born 4 month after his fathers death and yes it was noted i.e. his job then deceased

Hi
My later father-in-law was born 4 month after his fathers death and yes it was noted i.e. his job then deceased

The information that was recorded is only as good as that provided by the informant. No checks were made. If the informant didn't mention that father / mother was deceased then it would not have been recorded on the certificate. The same situation applies with fathers details on marriage certificates.

Rule of thumb:-

Word deceased appears assume that was the case.
No mention of deceased, could be either deceased or alive
No mention of father, assume illegitimacy