UK & Ireland Records: Birth, Marriage and Death Records

Civil Registration Records > Births > Marriages > Deaths

Records for all births, marriages and deaths in the UK have been kept since the introduction of registration in 1831 in England and Wales and 1855 for Scotland. These records provide invaluable information to assist Genealogists in their research.
These registrations help with the creation of family trees, allowing researchers to work back through records to the start of civil registration.

All Birth, Marriage and Death records, or BMD records were recorded and held at local registrry offices and in many cases these offices will still hold the original indexes. Since the original birth, marriage and death registers are not open to the public, getting access to the information on one of these certificates is done by first searching the national birth, marriage and death indexes, that have been created by the GRO for this purpose. The indexes for the three events are each divided into quarterly volumes, with the names for each quarter listed alphabetically. Once an entry in one of the indexes is found, you are then able to use that information to order of copy of a death, marriage or birth certificate from the GRO/ONS. The other information that can be obtained from the index includes:

• Year
• Record type (in this database this will always be "Birth")
• Quarter (March, June, September, and December)
• District (each county in England and Wales was divided up into registration districts)
• Volume
• Page number

The vast majority of UK Indexes are now in the process of being transcribed by local authorities with associations to Family History Societies. BMD records and other Family History data held by registry offices are now available online through a number of resources, the most important of which we have listed within this section; Births, Marriages and Deaths.

If you think there are further resources that we have not listed please send them to us at info@census-archives.com

Census records are the other main source of information for family historians. A considerable collection of Cesnus records are now available on-line, and tare listed extensively by census date, country, county and parish.

	England and Wales, Civil Registration Index: 1837-1900
	First Name		About the Search: "On 1 July 1837 a civil registration system for births, marriages and deaths was introduced in England and Wales. Registration was undertaken by civil registrars who reported to the Registrar General at the General Register Office (GRO) in London, now part of the Office for National Statistics (ONS)." (Mark D. Herber, Ancestral Trails, Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., 1998) Since the original birth, marriage and death registers are not open to the public, getting access to the information on one of these certificates is done by first searching the national birth, marriage and death indexes, that have been created by the GRO for this purpose. Powered by Ancestry.co.uk
	Last Name
	Type	All Types Births Deaths Marriages
	Volume
	Districts
	Quarter	Select All March June September December
	Year