Genealogy Chat

I am wondering whether the birth registration documents that we are now able to view online, were at any time viewed by the general public i.e. were it ever possible for records to be altered in any way with a pen by persons not authorised to make amendments?

Thank you!

I don't think so!


have you got a reason for thinking so?

An entry I mentioned a couple of days ago… the mother's maiden name has been left blank and handwritten in afterwards. I'm wondering why it was not typewritten at the time and also because the writing looks as if it could actually be that of the mother! (I'm probably just wanting it to be so).

Thank you for your kind reply Sylvia.

So, before the days of records being available online, were it not possible to browse through the volumes at an Office?

There are lots of amendments in the indexes, I doubt the general public had access to them though

Ok, thank you Jax. I will just be patient until next week when my certificate arrives.

Many thanks :-)

If you're talking abt England or Wales, what you can view online is the index to the GRO volumes, not the actual registrations themselves, (and not even the GRO's copy of the actual registration) The public does have access to the index, and could alter the index entry, although seeing as there are multiple copies of the index knocking around, it really would be a hassle for a private person to locate and alter all of these - of course the GRO can just send out a correction notice to its index holders.

In the 1960s, I went to the GRO get my b.cert - in those days it was at St Catherines House in London, near the Thames. One went into the search room, and the walls were lined with quarterly indexes. One grabbed the one you needed, and moved it to a tall table, like a bar table, looked up the details you needed (year, quarter, District, vol & page #, plus the name), filled out the application form, and took that to the cashier's wicket. The cashier looked the form over, then took the money and said my b.cert will be mailed out to me within so many days.

This was the same procedure too when the record books were at the London records
Office at Middleton street London

Spent many days there on trips from Kent with my local family history society

The actual certs were never able to be accessed by the public .any addendums were done by the local register office for the area of registry

mgnv,it would have been Somerset House nr the Thames that you went to, ,,,they were moved to St Caths Aldwych in 1987.

The public have always had access to the indxeses since 1837,,,,,,,,the public dont have access to the full entry ,just an index,

A fee could be paid at a local register office (in 199os it cost £18 per hour) to view the actual registers witin a certain time span for personal use only.

Kay - right it was Somerset House - slip of the memory (and after just 49 y).

All good stuff, thank you. It will take me a while to digest all that!

Many thanks everybody,

:-)

The indexes are known as the St Catherine s index. They have plenty of errors both in the original entries and in the index construction. There is a book about the problems of the St Cath index. The author actually rebuilt a chunk of the index as an example.

There are no end of missing and typo entries in FreeBMD. For some reason the version used by Ancestry is more complete. All orig entries were handwritten until about 1860. Some of the handwritten entries were typeset during c19 and others copy typed. Typo errors in the typeset are rare but trans errors by FreeBMD common. Type written entries are full of errors esp with marriages.

The original certs are stored in an archive in Dorset. The coalition canned a project to put them online which was a spinoff from the id project. From about late 70s there no orig certs just the computer entry. That makes it a lot easier for MI5/6 to invent people or the reverse.

In modern times it has been possible to re register births so that there can be two birth entries for the same person. The older entry is flagged and cannot used for passports etc. An example of this is Mrs A has a child by Mr B but it is registered as child of Mr A. After a divorce the child is rereg with surname of B.

Very interesting, thank you, Rollo :-)