Short Birth Certificates

In the most recent "Midland Ancestors" e-newsletter it is stated that the issue of "short" birth certificates (in England and Wales) began in 1947 but I have my mother's short birth certificate from 1910. These give the child's name and date and place of birth, but no information about the parents. There seems to be conflicting information online about the start date for these. Apparently, they were issued free of charge at the time of registration. Were they issued from the start of Civil Registration 1st July 1837? What is the date of the earliest short certificate in the possession of any LC members? What difference is there between those issued before and after 1947? Was that the date when they first had to be paid for? Are they still issued in some circumstances?

 

We were given short birth certificates when we registered the births of our children in the early 1980s, and they are headed up Certificate of Birth. I also have a copy of what I thought was a short certificate from 1918, but that is headed up Certificate of Registry of Birth, though otherwise contains the same information as a short birth certificate.

The one from 1918 says it’s to be given to the informant on demand for a fee not exceeding 3d, and in accordance with the 1874 Act. We didn’t have to pay for our children’s short birth certificates.

 

I have a copy of an original birth certificate from 1900, which is also headed Certificate of Registry of Birth, with information as on a short birth certificate and the same details on the back regarding the fee and 1874 Act.

 

The 1874 act contains this:

That looks like it refers to what became known as a short-form certificate, though I can see nothing that says what it should and should not contain. As is clear from the title, it was meant to be documentary evidence of registering a birth, not of the birth itself - except obviously it is, by implication.

 

I have one from 1887.

 

Thank you all for your interesting replies. I had not noticed that my mother's certificate was "of Registry of Birth" and the reference at the top to the 1874 Act is covered by discoloured sellotape, as is much of the certificate. I also have my Dad's short certificate, which is in far better condition. Looking through the original certificates of various family members, all have references to relevant Acts even as far back as 1811. All of the "full" certificates have the wording at the top "Certified Copy of an Entry of" Birth, Marriage or Death and I see that the marriage certificates were mostly copied from the parish register all in the same handwriting. My parents' certificate is the only one which has their actual signatures and those of the witnesses.

 

My husband has just unearthed 4 original Certificates of Registry of Birth from 1884, 1886, 1888 and 1916, so it seems like there were plenty of these issued.

Maybe short birth certificates of the kind I have from the 1980s were the ones which began in 1947?

 

Technically the former was what was supposed to happen - the couple and their witnesses signed both marriage registers, and the minister would copy the entry, including signatures, on to the certificate to give to the couple. However, some ministers would allow the couple to sign the certificate as well.

 

The " Certificate of Registry of Birth" predated the introduction of official short certificate, but essentially was the same thing. Officially it was a receipt to prove that the birth had been registered. For many people born pre-WW2 that was all they had as their parents didn't bother to pay the extra fee to have a full certificate.

 

So am I right in thinking that a 'Certificate of Registry of Birth' had no official status, i.e. couldn't be used as evidence of place or date of birth, unlike the later short certificate?

I have quite a few family birth certificates (some short, some full) issued many years after the birth - in one case a full certificate issued in 1970 for a birth in 1890, and in another a short certificate issued in 1982 for a birth in 1903. I assume these would have been obtained for official purposes, e.g. to obtain a passport?

 

You can’t (or at least, you couldn’t in the early 1990s) get a passport with a short birth certificate. When we needed to get our children their own passports (they had previously been on mine) we had to get their full birth certificates. Until then we hadn’t really realised that what we’d been given when registering their births were only short birth certificates.

I don’t know what official purposes they could be used for.

 

Which certificate is required is up to whoever is asking for it. My father has an "abbreviated certificate of birth" for himself which he got in 1977. He retired the next year from the civil service, so it was needed to prove his date of birth (I had to do the same for my company pension). Mind you, since he joined in 1936 when 18, I'm sure they had asked for evidence of his age then.

This was a Scottish example, hence the vocabulary is different but the basic idea is the same. So it calls itself an abbreviated certificate of birth and cites the Scottish registration act of 1965, though the order form calls it an "extract" (the standard Scots term for an official transcript). And it cost £1.25; these days you get one free with a birth (in England you get a choice of long or short but pay £11).

 

That's interesting. My husband and I both only have our short birth certificates, yet neither of us had any problems getting passports in the early 1970s (and renewing them subsequently).

Also, my husband's grandfather never went abroad until 1972 when he went to America and had to get a passport for the first time at the age of 68. I have his short birth certificate, issued in April 1972, I assume for the purpose of getting a passport.

From what you say, it looks like the rules changed between the 1970s and 1990s.

 

Now I think about it, we had to get my son’s passport at fairly short notice, and he and I did the application in person at a passport office rather than by post. So maybe that made the difference?

 

That's possible. We paid for full certificates for our children when they were born in the 1980s - as well as receiving the shortform ones free - but I can't remember which we used when sending off for their passports, which I think was around 1990-91.

At the time, separate passports were not needed for children but as they were travelling with their grandparents not us, they needed them. However, at the time, passports were not recommended for under-fives, so we put our younger son (aged about 4) on his older brother's passport. Not all countries would accept this though! Younger son got his own passport once he turned 5.

 

Looking at the documents needed now to apply for your first adult passport, it does state specifically that you need a full birth certificate rather than a short one, and if you were born after 1 January 1983, you also need the full birth certificate of a parent.

 

The 1983 date reflects the changes made in the nationality Act 1981. For issuing passports, birth registration is mainly of interest because of what it says about nationality. Identity is a separate matter: the question there is whether the person in the picture was the baby in the register or documents.

The GRO is now part of the passport office, of course, so they have direct computer access to the registration data. In fact there's an API for doing that, and its used by other departments too. Presumably the digital index we all use was first created for this purpose, and then extended back to records too old to relate to living people. The internal instructions for passport issuers are on line, and refer to this (LEV):

The Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 specifies both a Short certificate of birth and a Certificate of registration of birth. The relevant sections are:

I think this 1953 act brought in the short certificate, though it's hard to be sure. The full certificate (or certified copy of an entry...) is not mentioned in it, so the previous legislation (probably the 1874 act) carried on. After 1953, most changes were by regulation not statute, e.g. in 1968, which is harder to keep track of.

By the way, it is now once again possible to use the histpop.org site to look up laws (to 1939) and other stuff, as it's running properly! Someone must have bought it (or moved it to) a new server.

 

My birth certificate - a short 'Certificate of Birth' not a 'Certificate of Registry of Birth' - references the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1947, so I think it is that 1947 Act which brought in the short birth certificate, as stated in MazH's first post in this discussion.

 

Ah - I was wondering about that, as I couldn't find the text of that act; it's not in legislation.gov.uk nor in histpop.org. But what Google has found for me is the Hansard report of the Commons discussing the 1947 bill. This says that short certificates were introduced in Scotland in 1934 (described as a "try-out") and it confirms what we thought was the main reason for introducing short-form certificates:

Most of the discussion that follows is about the cases where the full certificate is seen as causing problems, and whether a short form one will solve this. The main argument here is that producing a short-form certificate will imply there is a reason not to have a full one.

 

Full Birth Certificate or Adoption Certificate. Adoptees only have the short form Birth Certificate. A full birth certificate is not available to them in their adopted situation.