Access to Historical BMD registers - a Registrar's viewpoint

It seems to me that what we are seeking needn't conflict with the stretched resources of local register offices like our friend, the Registrar, and that in the long term, our requirements should be self funding.

As far as I am aware, a significant number of Births and Marriages, probably including all the historical ones, have already been scanned. The major NEW requirement is for new linked indexes. Perhaps in the short term, by negotiation with freeBMD, their indexes could be used until more comprehensive (and more accurate) ones are available.

As to cost, scotlandspeople make historical images available at less than half the cost of UK certificates (not sure what they cost in Scotland, but certtainly EW ones at £9.25(?). In Australia, the States of Victoria and Queensland have a fairly comprehensive service at approximately half the cost of official certificates (and often they contain MORE information!) NSW to my knowledge is also working on it, and I believe WA may also have something available. So does New Zealand.

Yes, the government in London will have to invest some money in this process, but it should pay for itself in two different ways, besides making historical certificates available at a reasonable cost, the same system could be used by the General Register Office, and perhaps also local register offices, for producing official certificates more efficiently (and the on-line arrangement should reduce the burden upon their offices of producing genealogical certificates/images.)

To my way of thinking, the establishment of the historical BMD image service needs to be separated from the registrar's part of the department, while keeping in mind the requirements of the Register Offices and providing for them in the software systems to be implemented. In this way, no funding would need to be withdrawn from the Registry part of the department, and the government could keep tabs on the cost-effectiveness of the new arrangement.

 

Scotland's People allows you to access a historical image for 5 credits, with search results costing 1 credit. You can purchase 30 credits for 7 pounds, so for that 7 pounds you can realistically expect to be able to access 5 "certificates".

As for Australia: WA, NSW, QLD and SA allow free access and searching of their indexes (searching for the correct name costs you nothing)- however a historical image will vary in cost between states: $31 (NSW), $34 (WA), $20 (QLD); South Australia only offers access to transcripts rather than the image of the registration and that will cost you $22.

Victoria charges 99c to search their index and $21 to download a historical image. (We're hoping that the cost to search will soon be removed).

As for the content of the registration itself, you're right; Australian registrations can contain a lot more information than their British counterparts. It does depend on the age of the registration (and in some cases the place of registration), but Victorian birth registrations contain: Birth place; date; name; father's name, age, birthplace & occupation; mother's name, maiden name, age & birthplace; marriage date and other children of marriage; witnesses of the birth; where registered and by who and the name of the registar themselves.
A death certificate from Victoria contains: when & where died; name + occupation; age and sex; cause of death, length of illness, medical attendant and when said attendant saw the deceased; Name & surname of both parents, usually including mother's maiden name, with occupation of father if known; name, description and address of the informant; registar's name; place and date of burial, with name of minister and religion of deceased; Where born and length of time in colony - often will include more than one colony; information about marriage - who, when and where they were married, often including years of marriage, plus any children born of that marriage including their ages, living or dead.

Often the information on the certificate is only as good as the informant, but I have so far only found one of my direct line whose certificate was incredibly wrong - parents names were incorrect, it only mentioned one of his marriages and only half of his living children etc - although the length of time he'd been living in the colony was correct. I've also found ancestors who had second marriages I didn't know about when finding their certificates, including one who married in England, came to Victoria, only for his wife to die, so he went back to England and married again, then came back to Victoria!

 

I have found the same thing, especially with Victorian marriages and deaths. And, of course, the persons marrying are usually much better informants than their children when they die. So in the case of my wife's 2Xg-grandparnets, the children made quite a lot of errors on the death certificates, some of them understandable. For the father, they had no idea of his father's or mother's names, did not know about his first marriage, or about a son he had who'd died, and said he was born in county Devon. Not only this, but I doubt if any of those in Victoria knew he'd changed his surname, from GARBUTT to CORBETT! I only know this for sure because of the list of living children, which included one more for the father than the mother, agreed with the children mentioned on his arrival in New Zealand. His marriage to the second wife took place in South Australia, and unfortunately, this marriage, like those of the 19th century in Tasmania, contained no information about the parties' parents. The SA records did, however, contain the deaths of his first wife and his son, which led to English birth and marriage certificates, which then identified his Father's name and occupation. It turned out he was born in County Durham, not Devon!!!

Victorian death certificates, listing all known children, living and dead, are of huge value! Sadly, Tasmanian certificates are only available (after 1900) at full price, and contain significantly less information. The one consolation is that the historical images, available on-line before 1900, are FREE!

 

Oh I know what you mean Bazza43!

The one I mention that was terribly inaccurate was one where someone else had already done all the researching already, so that was how I knew it was wrong! My g-g-grandfather's death register interestingly only made mention of his first wife, and their children, and didn't include his second wife and the children that he'd had with her, even though she was still alive at the time! (My g-g-grandfather's second wife died 10 years after him) - but not only that, his parents, written on the death certificate as "John & Annie" were instead George and Dorothea! Ironically, the listing of my g-g-grandfather's time in Victoria and previous to that South Australia were both correct, as were the names and ages of his first wife and children. Since my g-g-grandfather had about 14 children with his two wives, I briefly considered perhaps they didn't want to list them all, but then I have the death certificate of a aunt of mine (g-g-g or something) who had only 1 husband and about 14 children and all of them were listed, including the ones who died in infancy!

Ouch - I don't have any family in Tasmania, but it's a interesting trade off! (Mine are currently limited to South Australia, Victoria and some in Queensland, with only extended family in WA).