Re-registration of births

The re-registration of births (in England/Wales) after the Legitimacy Act 1926 isn't well understood so it was very good to see the entry in the latest newsletter ( 20th Nov 2023).

I would add a few observations ...

The 1926 Act led to a huge influx of re-registrations in the registers in 1927/28 as people took advantage of the new legislation. Legitimacy (and being able to prove it) mattered at that time, not just because of any stigma, but crucially because of inheritance rights ( which weren't finally changed until the 1980s). But there can be a huge gap between the original birth, the marriage and the re-registration - I have an example of a birth in 1892, the parents marrying in 1894, but where the birth wasn't re-registered until 1939, when the "child" was 47 years old.

However, after the act was introduced legitimacy was automatic by the marriage, and wasn't dependent on re-registration, and there was no penalty (or offence) for failing to re-register so in effect it was an optional step to take . The 1926 Act also required the parents to have been free to marry at the time the child was born, even though they didn't, as the government felt that otherwise they would be seen to be "condoning adultery", so many children were not eligible to be declared legitimate (or re-registered).

For a child to be re-registered under the Act, the parents would have to confirm that the now husband was in fact the father of the child, and not just a step-father, but of course whether he truly was or not could not be tested, nor are re-registrations ever part of the adoption process.

The restriction on the parents having been free to marry was removed by a later Legitimacy Act (in 1959), but it wasn't until the Legitimacy Act of 1976 that a penalty was introduced for failing to re-register and so it became in effect compulsory. That is the law in place today, and as so many children are now born before the parents marry re-registrations are an everyday event in register offices - but even so many parents still either forget, don't realise, or just don't bother to do it. I'm not aware that anyone has ever been prosecuted under the requirement, and there is certainly no chasing of parents to do it, beyond reminding them when they marry.

Births are also commonly re-registered to add an unmarried father to an entry on which he wasn't originally named ( perhaps he was unable to attend the original registration), and can occasionally be re-registered for other reasons, if the Registrar General directs it.

Today it isn't unusual for a birth to be registered three times... ( and the name of the child can be changed each time, in certain circumstances)

1) By an unmarried mother alone ( no father named), then
2) Re-registered to add the unmarried father to the entry, then
3) Re-registered again, under the Legitimacy Act after the parents marry

In the article - the suggestion that the wrong year has been put on the later certificate is incorrect - the year at the top of the certificate is always taken from the year of registration - it refers to the year of the birth register in the district this entry was taken from, not the actual birth event, so 1931 is in fact correct.

Most importantly, a re-registration creates a new entry in a register, and will have a different reference (and can be months/years later), unlike a correction which just amends an existing entry.

Antony
(former deputy registrar)

 

Births could be re-registered at any time if the RG authorised (or instructed) it, and could be for a multitude of reasons ..... if you have a 1921 example I'd need to see it to try and understand what happened.

Before the 1926 Act, most re-registrations that I have seen are usually because of some significant issue on the original entry that the RG deemed couldn't just be dealt with by a correction - something like the entry being in the wrong district, having an unqualified informant (probably the most common), or even being completely fraudulent.

 

My husband has certificates for an illegitimate birth that was re-registered, a bit later than the example in the newsletter. He was investigating a family rumour that a relative had fathered an illegitimate child during the second world war, shortly before being killed in action. No names were known, but following up on the woman named as the main beneficiary in the relative's will, he eventually tracked down the birth of her illegitimate child (R), and being advised that the birth had been re-registered 25 years later, obtained the certificates from both registrations. The earlier certificate included the note that the birth had been "Re-registered under Section 14 of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953" with the date, the later one had R's new surname, added the name of the woman's then husband (W) as the father, and indicated that the re-registration was on the authority of the Registrar General.

Further investigation revealed that the woman had been married and had a child before her relationship with my husband's relative. She had 3 further illegitimate children in the 5 years after the birth of R, and two years after that married W as a divorcee. From the GRO indexes, it appears that the youngest of the 4 illegitimate children was re-registered under W's surname when aged about 7, and the other two were re-registered with R in the late sixties, all 3 then adults.

 

"Section 14" re-registrations are those done after the parents marry ( as per the Legitimacy Act).

You are incorrect to say that any births were registered under a particular surname .... no surname is shown for the child on a birth regsiter (in E/W) entry before 1969, and that includes re-registrations. So what you are seeing in the indexes are the surname(s) of the parents named on the entry - one or both, depending on their marital status ( and also which index you are using- they do differ).

 

Yes, I was aware that, but I guess it would have been helpful to others if I'd said so, so thank you for that.

I'm also aware of the situation regarding registration and surnames, and the person for whom we have a certificate was re-registered with a surname given. Although I did not give an exact year for the later 3 re-registrations, I did say late sixties, and it was in fact 1969. I was careful to say with the earlier re-registration that the child was in the GRO index "under W's surname", and I was not intentionally implying that a surname would have been given for the child in the full entry or on a certificate from that date.

 

my apologies