Census Archives

Birth Records Explained

Birth records are one of the most important public records when tracing family history. People can often change their name for a variety of reasons either through marriage, deed poll or by a statutory declarations and often changes are believed to have taken place as slight variations due to illiteracy and changes in spelling) . The one record they cannot change or alter is the original birth date; this makes the birth certificate one of the most important records to a genealogist.

When examining a birth certificate there are a number of key pieces of information to be analysed as they may all yield important clues. 

Birth Certificate Heading

The heading at the top of the birth certificate has some relevance to the researcher analysing the indexes.

Under the early organisation of civil registration, the most obvious unit that already existed and could be adapted to registration districts were the Poor Law Unions. Many of the original districts were a straight use of these and indeed those who administered the poor laws often became the first superintendent registrars.

Poor Law Unions were made up of several parishes and the Unions could on occasion cross county boundaries. As a registration district could be sizeable - especially in rural areas - the actual place of birth could be a long way away - and in a different region - from the town that gave its name to the registration district. If you can find a birth registration at the right time but apparently in the wrong place close by it may still be worth checking it out.

Some villages could lie in more than one registration district so that if a family moved down the road or across it they could be in a totally different registration district for the next child in the family.

A sizeable registration district was divided into two or more sub-districts for example the Eton Registration district in 1837 had 3 - the Eton, Burnham, and Iver sub- districts. Each birth had to be registered in its correct sub-district.

Applications for a birth certificate can sometimes take quite a while to get to the correct current registration district. For exampleif you find a birth in the Dec quarter 1852 Eton district and ask where Eton registrations are held you will be told to apply to the Windsor and Maidenhead Register Office (because that is where current Eton registrations go). However, none of the Eton registrations before 1974 are held there - and most of them are at Slough so the application will be passed on to Slough. Slough only has 2 out of the 3 Eton sub-districts however, and once a search has been made of those it will be passed to Chiltern and South Bucks. Not surprising then if your certificate takes some time to get to you!

Entry Number and GRO reference

The first column on a certificate of birth is the entry number in the register. This can be a number from 1 to 500. Twins can sometimes be identified when they have the same GRO reference. The GRO reference is for a whole page of a register which means 5 entries. 

If you have twins on the same page they will have the same reference number. (However if the twins were the last entry on one page and the first on the next they will have consecutive reference numbers not the same.)

Also it is important to note that when there are two different families with the same surname on the same page they may not be twine, and this is not as unusual as it may appear. 

Column 1 - Date And Place Of Birth

The date of birth should be clearly written in the form "Date Month Year" although in some of the early registrations there are variations.

It is also surprising how often dates and birth dates in particular are inaccurate! One possible cause is when parents have lied about the date of birth to bring their birth dates within the 6 week registration date. These days, birth dates are checked against other lists to confirm their accuracy but that is a relatively recent development. If you are getting one set of birth dates from one source such as a baptism and another set from the certificate it is worth looking at the column 8 on the birth certificate and see how close to the 6 weeks limit the registration was. There is no such thing as a "late" baptism and therefore less need for parents to alter the date.

It is also worth noting that parents with sizeable families, which was not uncommon, frequently confuse which child was born when especially when the birth dates are close to one another - a second reason why the date of birth is sometimes not accurate.

If there is a time against the date of birth then there was more than one child born alive at the birth. If however a mother had twins, one liveborn and one stillborn, then the live born twin will not have a time against the birth. Until 1926 there were no registrations at all of a still born child. It is also worth noting that these are typical of entries but are not consistent. If a child lived even for a few seconds there should be both a birth registration and a death registration but in early registration certificates this will not have always been the case.

The place of birth is not of much help in the early registrations. The description is likely to be just the village name although notable or noble land owners will have their properties listed on the early registrations. By 1860 the address was commonly in use – in particular street names and by 1880 full addresses were in use.

You need to look at the place of birth against the informant and address in Column 7. If the mother has registered and the names given in Column 2, and 7 are identical you are likely to have the mothers address at the time of the birth. This also applies to the father. However if the child is illegitimate and born in the workhouse and the workhouse master registered – which was a relatively common occurrence - then you have not got a permanent address for the mother of the child. You will have the address at which the birth took place - the workhouse - and the address of the informant who lives at the workhouse. In early registrations the mother is not likely to have travelled far from home to give birth, but may have travelled  from several parishes away. In later dates mothers were more likley to have travelled long distances from home especially when the baby was going to be adopted and the pregnancy hidden from the rest of the family/village.

Similarly if the mother went to her mother for the birth of a baby she could be quite a long way away from her real home but it will not necessarily show on the registration. What you could have is the address at which the birth took place - grandmothers - and the informants address which might be grandmother again as being present at the birth.

If the place of birth in Column 2  is in lign with your expectations you can move on. If you have rejected registration records as they do not match exactly, you should look again at the information you have already collected and review where possible inaccuracies lie and whether the information can be relied upon entirely.

Column 2 - Forenames

The name (or names) entered in Column 2 of a birth certificate is the forename(s).

A child can be registered without a first name and even today this occasionally occurs. On occasion, nearly 9 months down the line ( where there is 6 weeks left to register in)  the family will still not have chosen a name.  Sometimes this is because the baby is to be put up for adoption and the mother cannot cope with naming the child - it gives the baby more of an identity and makes it harder for the mother.

Whether or not the child has been named in column 2, it is possible - by using Column 10 - to alter the name. The reason for this is due to the the fact that the Church of England was the established church in existence before civil registration. Names by baptism in 1837 were considered of greater importance than names by civil registration and so the facility was provided for the name to be changed by baptism provided the baptism took place within one year of the date of registration. The two critical words here are "baptism" and "registration", Provided the baptism was done within the year the actual change of name in the registers could be done many years later.

The change of name could be provided by adding or removing names, or altering the spelling or order. When there are difficulties tracing ancestors it could be that a child was registered in one name and baptised in another but the registration certificate was not kept up to date. Where a name has been altered by baptism or change of name and added to the register, the indexes should have been updated to show the new name.

Today the same facility to change the name has been extended by offering a "change of name" form for those whose children are not or cannot be baptised into the Christian church.

Children registered with two first names are frequently called by the second. Where a child was illegitimate with no fathers details in the register it is common to find a name such as William Johnston in column 2 which might possibly suggest a surname for the father of the child.

For the surname of the child you have to look at Column 4 or Column 6 where the parents names are recorded but I will look at that when I get there.

Unlike many countries there is no fixed list of names from which the parents must choose. The only prohibitions on names are that they must not be blasphemous or obscene. Similarly there is no prescribed list of spellings for names either so you sometimes get very strange spellings in the name column - either because the parent chooses a name that they have no idea how to spell (frequent with low levels of literacy in various areas) or because they deliberately choose to spell the name in unique way.

Names can be very helpful in placing an approximate age on someone. A surprising number of people have a second name that is the place of a famous battle or after a soldier hero or politician or pop star or whatever.

Column 3 – Sex

Before 1969 the sex of the child was denoted by boy or girl and after that date by male or female.

There have been numerous mistakes made in recording the sex of the child. Commonly this is a problem if the child is named with a non gender specific came such as Alex. This is especially common where parents are illiterate and cannot check the registration is correct, it is quite possible for mistakes to be made in any part of the information including the sex of the child.

On occasion there have been mistakes made in recording the sex of a baby and on very rare occasions there are children born for whom it is very difficult indeed to ascertain the sex.

It is quite possible for the sex of the child to be mistaken at birth although the mistake is usually very quickly realised. So if you identify an ancestor who appears to have been born but never died or married and disappeared or switched sex then this could provide you with a possible answer.

Column 4 - Father's Name

There is a fundamental difference between the way children born inside and outside of marriage are registered because of the differences in law recognising the two. For example inheritance was affected by legitimacy in the past and nationality of a child still is.

Whether father is entered in the register depends on two factors - if the couple married (this information is always entered) and the date the registration was made.

The early registrations between 1837 and approximately 1850 are a little mixed. The Act of Parliament of 1836 states “It be enacted that the father or mother of every child born in England................shall within 42 days next after the day of every such birth give information upon being requested so to do to the Registrar, according to the best of his or her knowledge and belief of the several particulars hereby required to be known and registered touching the birth of such child provided always that it shall not be necessary to register the name of any father of a bastard child."

Now some registrars interpreted that quite freely and put father in even where the couple were not married and only mother or someone else was signing the register and some did not allow fathers details to be entered in the register. By about 1850 the situation had been clarified and the instructions read quite clearly "No putative father is to be allowed to sign an entry in the character of "Father" ". From that time, therefore there are 2 kinds of entries in the register

(1) Where the parents were married to one another, fathers details must be entered in the register and only one parent will sign the register (or some other informant)

(2) Where the parents were not married to one another there will be blanks in Column 4 (fathers name) and Column 6 (his occupation).

This situation lasted until the Registration Act of 1875 where the instruction read "The putative father of an illegitimate child cannot be required as father to give information respecting the birth. The name, surname and occupation of the putative father of an illegitimate child must not be entered except at the joint request of the father and mother; in which case both the father and mother must sign the entry as informants". 

There are therefore 3 kinds of entry after this Act:

(1) Described above

(2) Described above

(3) Where the parents are not married to one another but both attended the register office together, fathers details are entered in Column 4 and Column 6 and both parents sign. Looked at a different way - if both parents have signed in Column 7 regardless of what names they are using then the parents were not married to one another at the time of the birth of the child.

This situation lasted until 1953 when the same 3 entries could still be made but there were other ways in which father when not married to mother could be included in the entry without being present to sign. If a mother was widowed before the birth of her legitimate baby the entry will show (deceased) after fathers name.

The child will take its surname from that of father in Column 4 where the parents were married and from mother in Column 5 if they were not married and fathers name is not entered. The child could take either surname if it was a joint entry and both mother and fathers surnames are shown but are different.

The name given for father is the name he was known by at the time of the birth of the baby. These days if the father has changed his name between his own birth and that of his child he could be entered in the register as John SMITH formerly known as John GRAY but that was not the case until fairly recently. If a man adopted his stepfather's name or that of the family who brought him up or used his fathers name even though only mothers was shown on his birth certificate, you are going to have a problem going back any more generations. You have to remember that until the recent advances in fertility treatment - the maternity of the child has never been in doubt but the paternity is known only to the mother! Seriously - it is the reason why the mother has always been the prime informant for the birth of a child even since 1837.

Column 5 - Mother's Name

Column 5 of a birth certificate shows the name, and previous names if any, of the mother of the baby. There are several combinations of name possible. If a woman has not been married there will be a sole entry for her name. If a woman has ever been married there will be two names shown for her. If a woman has been married more than once the names shown will be. If a woman has been married, all previous names should be shown whether the baby being registered was legitimate or not.

In later records it is possible to find a mother registered along the lines of Margaret Blinco otherwise Margaret Joel. This shows that she was using a name to which she didn't have legal entitlement For exampleshe was living with someone called Blinco and using his name but was not married to him. Margaret Blinco otherwise Margaret Joel formerly Smith would show that she started life as a Smith, married and became Joel and was now living with someone and using his name.

The format of the registers changed in 1969 so that if a woman had married more than twice before her present marriage not all her previous married names would be shown.

It is important to remember that the definition of the maiden surname in registration is NOT the surname at birth but is the surname used at the first marriage. The reason for that is when tracing back , the next step would be to find the marriage of a child's parents and so it is necessary to look for the names used at marriage. The marriage certificate should show the natural fathers name not the stepfathers and so therefore you would have the birth name. 

Its also worth noting that married women never had an occupation. Being a wife and mother was all the occupation allowed. This was not altered until the late 1980's after a threatened legal action, when women were finally allowed to have an occupation shown against their name and only in the last few years has there been a dedicated space for a mother's occupation. However, mothers of illegitimate children had an occupation shown - one of the few compensations for finding illegitimacy.

All the problems associated with changes of name for one reason or another were covered in the tutorial on the fathers name.

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 is the case in census records, men only had legal and rrecognisable jobs recorded such as  blacksmith, shepherd, farmer.

Labourer might mean totally unskilled but could also mean a quite specific skill For example 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".

Column 7 - Signature, Description and Residence of the Informant

Starting with the signature. Once the entry has been checked by the informant, he or she signs in Column 7 - their usual signature. If the informant can't sign their name then they make a mark and the registrar completes it with the words "The mark of...........". If you see this on a certificate warning bells should start to ring. It means that the informant has been unable to check the information for himself/herself and the registrar has done the best possible. Especially where a family has a name that is unusual in the locality where they are now living and where they have a strong accent, it is going to be luck if the registrar hits on the correct spelling of it. After all how many of you would spell Kirkcudbright correctly if you did not already know how it was pronounced and spelt and you had someone in front of you saying Kecoobree?

If someone can sign their name but in a different script then they sign in Chinese or Arabic or whatever and the registrar write "The signature of............". Same problem really - the informants probably can't check for themselves.

A signature does not necessarily mean that the informant could read. Many people learnt to write their name but nothing else. In a way this is worse because you don't know if they could read or not!

Description of informant. The current list of eligible informants reads, in order of preference

(1) In all cases - mother

(2) Father - if he is married to mother

(3) Father and mother jointly where they are not married to one another

(4) A person present at the birth

(5) The owner or occupier of the house or institution

(6) The person in charge of the child

After 1875 a joint registration could be made by the mother and father of the baby together if they were not married. Before that fathers details could not be given (from about 1850 to 1875) and before that it is a little bit variable, see Column 4 .

(1) Mother - mother was usually not in doubt although it was not unknown in the past for grandmother to go the register office and register her daughter's illegitimate daughter as her own.

(2) Father - he is the second choice by preference because - by biology alone - mother knows she is the mother and only she really knows (or might do!) who the father is. There is an assumption in law, however, that unless told otherwise, the husband is the father of the baby.

(3) Father/Mother jointly. From 1875 only for couples who were not married. Both were present at the registration and both signed.

(4) Person present at the birth. This covers a wide range of people - could be grandmother, aunt, sister, midwife, neighbour. The more remote they are in kinship from the parents of the baby, the less likely they are to give accurate information.

(5) The owner or occupier of the house or institution. This includes the master of the workhouse, matron of a hospital, a relative or friend if the mother had gone to have the baby there.

(6) The person in charge of the child. This could be the father of an illegitimate child - he could not register as father and have his details as father included but he could do the registration. It could be the master of the workhouse if an unmarried mother died in childbirth - or equally any vague relative or kind neighbour who took the baby in.

These days it is relativelyrare for anyone other than mother or father or both to register although all the other categories are very occasionally used to effect a registration if mother and/or father are not available for whatever reason. Eg I have seen "in charge of the child" in a registration where father of the baby was not known and mother was too mentally disabled to be capable of doing the registration.

The address of the informant. Remember that if a mother has a baby away from her own home and does not do the registration, you do not have an address for her. Addresses can be very vague before about 1880 - often just the name of the town or village is all that is given.

In 1837 the list included 1, 2, 4 and 5 and by 1875 the list looked much as today.

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.

Column 9 - Signature of Registrar

This is not particularly relevant unless you have an ancestor who was a registrar! If the registrar AND the superintendent registrar have both signed in Column 9 then there was something unusual about the registration - such as a late one or a re-registration of a birth.

Column 10 - Name Given After Initial Registration

This is for the entry of a name given after initial registration. This relates to the fact that before civil registration, the recording of the major life events was in the hands of the church and especially of course of the established church (Church of England). There was tremendous resistance to civil registration by the established church who felt (rightly as it happened) that people would stop baptising their children if they had an alternative piece of legal paper in a civil registration. And the church had had the power and responsibility for centuries.

If a child was registered without a forename and was then baptised, or if a child was registered with forenames that were changed at baptism - because baptism was in place before civil registration and was considered more important - then the facility was given to change the first names (but NOT the surname). These days the baptism must take place within one year of the date of registration but the alteration can be made to the register at any time once the baptism has been completed.

The importance of this is that very often a child had a name changed by baptism but the civil registration was not corrected. That means that the name used by the child will not match the indexes, which are amended if a space 10 correction is made. At baptism the names may be altered in order, changed in spelling, new ones put in, names taken out or changed totally. These days there is a facility for names to be changed without baptism because of course many people are of other faiths or do not go to church.