Comparing BMD indexes for England and Wales: Findmypast

Birth, marriage and death indexes are searched separately with customised search forms, or as part of more general categories. If you search a specific database (reached via the A-Z of record sets) the search page contains links to the other two civil registration databases, but you need to re-enter the data each time you switch to another database. There are no mandatory fields so you can search without a surname, or without any name all. If you are searching a single database for civil births, marriages or deaths, there is a neat feature that shows you how many results you will get once you have entered your search terms, but before you perform the search; when you have entered information in any of the search fields the text on the Search button turns to ‘See xxx results’.

On the search screen the ‘Name variant’ box is ticked for the First Name(s) field, and unticked for the Last Name field, which is generally the best option, but you can change this if you wish. Name variants on the first name will return common variants and diminutives such as Tom or Tommy for Thomas (and vice-versa), followed by results including the initial letter of the name.

Births 

The search screen for births includes a field for Mother’s Last Name, and when you start typing in this box there is a warning that the information only appears in the index from 1911 onwards. However, Mother’s Last Name has recently been added to some, but not all, birth index entries back to 1837, so search including years before 1911 may produce some results. You can use wildcards in the name fields if you leave the ‘Name Variants’ box unticked.

The default setting for the Birth Year box is +/- 2 years, but you can easily change this to limit your search to a single year, or +/- 1, 5, 10, 20 or 40 years. You can also limit your search results to a single quarter, which Findmypast describes as 1, 2, 3 or 4, instead of the more usual Mar, Jun, Sep and Dec, or Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun etc. You need to do this using Findmypast’s equivalent of the drop-down menu, where it says ‘Browse Birth Quarter’; when you select this option you tick the box of the quarter you require, and you can select more than one quarter. The Birth Quarter field contains the text ‘Start typing a birth quarter’ but nothing you type here has any effect, although this feature works perfectly well in other fields on this search page, ‘Browse District’ and ‘Browse County’. When using either of these options you can select from the Browse menu, or you can start typing in the search box when you will see a list of options appear, and you need to click on an option to select it. Typing alone, without selecting an option, will have no effect. This feature is used throughout Findmypast on many of its search pages. It is less intuitive than a conventional drop-down menu, but it has the advantage that you can easily select more than one district or county, and your selected options are clearly visible below the search box.

The District options are registration districts as they appear in the indexes. The County option is a useful way to restrict a search to a rough geographical area, but is not part of the index entry, and many registration districts straddle county boundaries. It can sometimes be more useful than the District option, because there have been many district changes since 1837, and it is possible to unwittingly select a registration district that did not exist during the years being searched, and so fail to get the results you might expect. There are two more search fields on the Birth search page, ‘Place Keywords’ and ‘Optional Keywords’. Typing any name or place name in the Optional Keywords box will produce results or filter existing ones, but since there are already perfectly good name and place search boxes this is of limited use. ‘Place Keywords’, on the other hand, can be a really useful feature; you can only search by registration district using the District field, but here you can type the name of a parish or other place. When you start typing you can choose from a list. For example, selecting ‘Gillingham, Kent, England’ will produce results from the the registration districts of Medway or Chatham, depending on the date. This is very helpful when you know a place of birth, but are not familiar with registration district boundaries and their changes over the years.

The results show the name, year, quarter, district and county, and the mother’s maiden name, where applicable. From 1984 onwards the indexes are annual, not quarterly, and the reference shows the month of registration, which has been converted to a notional quarter on the main results screen. There is also a panel on the left side of the results screen where you can refine your search, but this lacks some of the fields of the custom search page. This is fine as a quick way to change the name or date details, and if you need to go back to the custom search screen ‘Advanced options’ will take you there.

You can’t download the search results, but you can re-sort them by any of the fields displayed. The full reference details, including the volume and page (and the month, where applicable) are only displayed when you click on the transcription for each entry. Unfortunately there is no way to search or sort by volume and page number.

Deaths 

The search page for deaths is, not surprisingly, fairly similar to that for births, since many of the fields are the same. Because the death indexes show the age at death from 1866, there is a ‘Year of birth’ field, with the same +/- options. When you click in this box to start typing, you might expect to see a note to the effect that the age at death is not shown in the indexes until 1866, but instead there is the rather puzzling ‘most of our civil death & burial records cover the years of birth 1780 to 2006’.

Although the results displayed will include the year of birth, this does not appear in the indexes until 1969, so before this date it will be a figure arrived at by subtracting the age at death from the year of registration. This means that the calculated year of birth will sometimes be a year out - this is not a major problem in most cases, since the age supplied when registering a death is often inaccurate in the first place. Both the age at death and the calculated year of birth appear in the full transcription for deaths up to the March quarter of 1969, after that the year, month and day of birth are shown in the transcription.

At first sight, the place search options look more helpful than those for birth searches, because instead of ‘Optional keywords’ there is a Parish option which you can browse. But the ‘Place keywords’ box is still more useful; taking the example of Gillingham, the ‘Browse parish’ list offers only Gillingham, but there are three parishes of that name in England, so it will produce results from registration districts in Dorset, Kent and Norfolk. The Place keywords field allows you to distinguish between several parishes of the same name.

Marriages 

The marriage search does not have either the ‘Optional keywords’ or ‘Parish’ fields, only the more useful ‘Place keywords’, along with District and County. There are also fields for the surname and forename of the spouse, and the results show name, year, quarter, district, county and spouse’s surname (from 1912). Unlike the birth and death searches, there are fields for volume and page references. While this is useful, the main reason for using this facility is to identify likely spouses; but if you click on the transcription of an entry you will see the ‘Marriage finder’ feature that does this automatically. From 1912, when the surname of the spouse is included in the index, this will almost always be a single name, but in earlier years there can be several possible spouses, depending on the number of entries on the same page. The Marriage Finder suggests spouses of the opposite sex, based on their forenames, but in the case of forenames that can be either male or female it will present all the other names on the page, to be on the safe side.


 For all three events Findmypast provides some background information, which is generally helpful, although some of the advice is questionable, such as ‘If you can’t find your ancestors in these records, it’s possible they eloped or were in common law relationships.’ to their credit, they also direct you to the GRO site to order copies.

Browsing

Quite separate from the three search functions is 'England & Wales Birth, Marriage and Death Browse 1837-1983'. You can type or browse the event type, and the year +/- 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 or 40 as on the other screens, and type or browse the quarter. This time the 'Start typing a Event Quarter' (sic) works, because the quarters are described here as Jan-Mar, etc. The results list individual pages from the scanned indexes, described by name ranges, eg 'FAIRLESS, Joseph - FARRAL, Catharine'. There is an alphabet at the top of the page so that you can jump directly to any part of the index. Once you have clicked on the image link to the scanned page, you can browse forward or back through the images without returning to the results page.

 

Comparing BMD indexes for England and Wales: FreeBMD

FreeBMD should normally be the first port of call for anyone who wants to search the General Register Office (GRO) birth, marriage and death indexes. The exception would be when you want to use the more recent indexes; FreeBMD coverage is only up to 1983, the last when the paper indexes were the master copies. Also, since it is an ongoing volunteer project, it is not yet complete - although it is very close. The site has coverage charts that you can check before performing searches in the more recent indexes. 

There a single search screen so you can see all your options at once. You can search births, marriages or deaths, any two of them, or all three at once. The search fields are; last name, forename(s), surname of spouse/mother’s maiden name, spouse’s first name, age at death/date of birth, year and quarter, volumes and page. You can also filter a search to a specific district or county, and a date range. this is ‘from-to’ range, by year and quarter, rather than a ‘+/-‘ by year, so you can define a very precise range, even single quarter.  

The search engine will return results for the surname exactly as entered, and first names beginning with the letters as entered; so ‘Ann’ will return results for Anne, Anna, Annabel etc, including any with middle names. This is the default search, but there are options to select exact search on first names, and phonetic search on surnames. A search for +Ann will produce results where names starting with Ann appear anywhere in the first name field e.g. Gertrude Annie as well as Annie Gertrude. This also works with initials, so +P in the First name(s) field produces results such as Percy, Annie Phyllis, Peter John G and Edith P V.

Birth searches can include the mother’s maiden name (in the indexes from the September quarter of 1911). These searches will only return results from September 1911 onwards. Birth entries for twins will normally have the same page reference, but sometimes they will have consecutive numbers, where one entry is at the bottom of a page, and the other is at the top of the next page.

Marriage searches can include the surname and/or first name of the spouse - spouse’s surname is in the indexes from the March quarter of 1912, but the search will identify potential matches in the earlier records, i.e. where both names have the same reference, which means they appear on the same register page. There can be up to eight names on a page, so matching references do not guarantee that the two people married each other. You can restrict your search to those entries where the spouse's surname is guaranteed by selecting ‘Identifiable spouses only’.

Death searches can include a year of birth or an age. If you put an age at death, it will return results showing that exact age, and also where the age in the index is indistinct, or no age is shown all. The results will also include all entries before 1866, when the age was first included in the index. Results from the June quarter of 1969 will be those with dates of birth consistent with the age selected. You have the option to select ‘recorded ages only’ to get exact results. If you select a year of birth instead of an age, the results before June 1969 won’t be exact, but +/- 2 years.

None of the search fields is mandatory so you can search with just a forename, or even with no name at all. The search screen also has some other useful features; you can save searches, and download search results; if you click on ‘Count’ instead of ‘Find’ you will first see how many results your search will return; there is a maximum of 3000 that can be returned for a single search. 

Search results are colour-coded, pink for births, green for marriages and grey for deaths; this is helpful when searching across more than one event type. The Registration District is a hyperlink to information about that district, and the page number is a hyperlink to a list of all the entries on that page - particularly useful for identifying possible spouses in the marriage search results. 

The ‘Info’ button links to information about the transcribers, but gives no more information about the entry itself unless there is a Postem - extra detail added by an individual, but which does not appear in the index. but if you don't need to click on 'Info' to find out of there is a Postem, because an envelope symbol will also appear against the entry. You can submit corrections via the Info button; a further symbol, of a pair of spectacles, will lead to an image of the original paper or parchment index page to help you do this. 

More information about the site and the data can be found under ‘Advanced Facilities’, and there is a ‘Help’ button for more detailed information on how to search. The search results page includes more links, including instructions on how to order a certificate from the GRO or a local register office. Even frequent users of the site can easily miss some of its many features, which are well worth exploring. if you subsequently use another site for GRO searches, the comprehensive background information found on FreeBMD will prove invaluable. 

No site is perfect, but FreeBMD performs better than other sites in many ways, and is continually updated and improved.

Searching the online GRO birth, marriage and death indexes for England and Wales

Before I look at the details of online indexes on various websites, I want to say something about the indexes themselves. It is always easier to make sense of an online resource if you know something of the original hard-copy source it comes from.

Transcription slip used by the GRO

Searching the indexes

Even when the data is identical, you can get different results from different sites because the search engines they use work in different ways. You can even get different results using the same site, depending on the kind of search you use. On some sites you can search across all their records at once, or a general ‘births, marriages and deaths’ category. Searching over multiple databases at once requires somewhat ‘one size fits all’ search options. This has some advantages, but you can perform more refined searches by tackling one set of records at a time.

Sites have different options for coping with variant spellings, including the use of wild cards. If there is a variant spelling option, this will usually involve some kind of computer algorithm; while  this can be useful, it may not cover all the variant spellings of a name, and may produce a number of irrelevant results. You can usually refine searches or filter results by place, and the date range to be searched may be set in different ways. 

It’s important to know that the indexes don’t include all forenames in certain years. So if your search includes middle names you may not find the results you want, depending on the site you are using and the search options you have chosen. All names appear in full in the manuscript indexes from 1837 to 1865 (some of these indexes were withdrawn and replaced by typed indexes, which also contain full names). Printed indexes were introduced in 1866, and for 1866 only, initials are used for all but the first forename; from 1867 to 1909 you will see two forenames, then initials, from 1910 to 1968 the indexes were typed, and show only one forename, then initials. In 1969 computers were first used to prepare the indexes, and from then onwards show two forenames, then initials.

Different times, different errors

Most index information is accurate, but with millions of entries over more than 180 years, there are bound to be mistakes. Depending on the time, and the method of copying used, there are different kinds of errors to look out for.

Until well into the 20th century cursive script was generally used, so even where the final index was printed or typed, the paper slips used for manual sorting were handwritten; so when trying to work out how a name might have been mis-copied, think of letters that look similar in cursive script, not in block capitals, typescript, or print. In the case of capital letters ‘F’ ‘J’ and ’T’ do not look similar when typed or printed, but when handwritten they are easily mistaken for each other, especially at the beginning of an uncommon surname.

When typing, especially on a computer keyboard, it is all too easy to hit the same key twice by accident. The surname Quarmby is a rare one, and I am reasonably certain that the version beginning ‘QQ’ is not a spelling variant, but is the result of ‘fat-finger’ typing - it’s in the death index for the March quarter of 1975 if you want to look for yourself.

Online indexes up to 1983 have been copied from scanned versions of original parchment or paper indexes. But the scans themselves were made from microfilm or microfiche versions, which were themselves copies. The filming that was done in the 1960s was of better quality that the microfiche version made in the 1980s, but the fiche version was much more widely available. The fiche version of the older hand-written volumes could be particularly hard to read - while perfectly legible in their original form, their parchment pages were more brown and beige than black and white. 

In both cases there was always the possibility of two pages being turned over at once by a camera operator, thus losing two pages of entries. When some of the early hand-written index volumes were withdrawn and replaced with typed copies, a typist could also turn over two pages at once with the same result. Additionally, the typed indexes show each surname only once, which saves a lot of key-strokes and therefore time, and typewriter ribbon. Unfortunately, if a surname was mis-copied, or omitted altogether, this could result in a whole block of forenames being indexed under the wrong surname. In the typed index to for the December quarter of 1864 all the ‘Day’ births up to Elizabeth Sarah are wrongly listed under the much rarer name of ‘Dax’ because the typist failed to type the surname ‘Day’ after the entry for Gilbert Elliot Dax.

Finally, some entries do not appear in the indexes at all because they did not make it through all the stages of indexing; copies of some entries, particularly marriages, did not even get to the General Register Office in the first place, even though the original is held in the local Register Office. 

Comparing websites – Birth, marriage and death indexes for England and Wales

I recently delivered a talk at Rootstech 2018, which was well-received, and this spurred me on to return to some work I did on comparing the online indexes that appear on various websites. This post is an overview of the main sites and their coverage, and will be followed by more in-depth looks at the individual sites. Anyone who doesn't mind listening to me for an hour can view the Rootstech presentation in full. 

indexes Indexes to the birth, marriage and death registers for England and Wales are very widely available. You will find them on a number of sites, some free, some commercial. Although the records are (theoretically) the same, there are differences between the various indexes, and it is worth knowing about them to get the best results from your searches.

There is a single set of records for births, marriages and deaths since 1837, held by the General Register Office (GRO). But this is not the only set. Births and deaths are registered at a local Register Office, and the original records are still held locally. The central registers were compiled from copies sent to the GRO, called quarterly returns. 

Marriage registers are a little more complicated, because marriages could be performed in a number of places; principally, churches of various denominations, synagogues, Quaker meeting houses and register offices. The original registers may be with the church (or more usually a local record office), or at the register office, but, like the births and marriages, the GRO marriage registers were compiled from the quarterly returns.

The main sites where you can consult indexes to GRO registers are: 

• www.FreeBMD.org.uk
• www.Ancestry.co.uk
• www.FindmyPast.co.uk 
• www.genesreunited.co.uk
• www.familysearch.org
• www.gro.gov.uk
• www.myheritage.com
• www.thegenealogist.co.uk
• www.bmdindex.co.uk

None of them is complete, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses, so it is worth using a combination of them for best results. The most recent indexes are not online anywhere, they can only be consulted on microfiche at selected locations – details of these are on the GRO site.

Coverage

FreeBMD 1837-1983

As the name suggests, this is a free site, the result of an enormous amount of work by an army of volunteers. It is still a work in progress, although the coverage charts for births, marriages and deaths show that it is virtually complete up to the early 1960s, but with many gaps after that. It ends at 1983, the last year before the indexes were ‘born digital’ and the databases were retained by the GRO. 

Ancestry 1837-2005 (births and marriages) 1837-2007 (deaths)

This is a commercial site, but there is free access at many libraries, record offices and FamilySearch centres. However, Ancestry’s indexes 1837-1915 for all three events come from FreeBMD, and so are still free to search on Ancestry. You will not always get identical results from the two sites because both allow users to submit corrections, so any amendments or updates to FreeBMD after Ancestry acquired the data will only appear on FreeBMD. Similarly, any changes made on Ancestry will not appear on FreeBMD. Indexes from 1916 to 2005 (births and marriages) and 1916 to 2007 (deaths) are Ancestry’s own. You can also browse the images of the index volumes 1837 to 1983.

FindmyPast 1837-2005 (marriages) 1837-2006 (births) 1837-2007 (deaths)

Also a commercial site, but with free access at many libraries record offices and FamilySearch centres. All of the indexes on FindmyPast were prepared independently of those on FreeBMD or Ancestry. You will also find them on www.Genenesreunited.co.uk, which is owned by the same company. You can also browse images of the index pages 1937 to 1983. The indexes can also be searched free of charge on www.familysearch.org

General Register Office 1837-1917 (births) 1837-1957 (deaths) 

These indexes are free to search, but you need to register an account with the site and log in to use them. You need to do this anyway to order certificates from the GRO; ordering GRO certificates from anywhere else will cost more, and take longer. The GRO’s own indexes are the newest to appear online, and are limited in coverage, but they were created by re-indexing the quarterly returns. All of the others are transcriptions of the existing indexes. 

MyHeritage 1837-2005

It is not clear from the MyHeritage site whether they have compiled their own indexes, or obtained them under licence from another site. As well as the three databases for 1837-2005, there is a GRO birth index for 1911-1954. This is one of the three major commercial sites worldwide, along with Ancestry and FindmyPast, but has a relatively low profile in the UK, so it is less likely to be available free of charge in record office and libraries, but there is free access in FamilySearch centres.

  

The Genealogist 1837-2005

These indexes were prepared independently of the others, and are also available  on www.bmdindex.co.uk which belongs to the same company.  FamilySearch centres have free access, and some libraries and record offices may also have free access; but it is much less widespread than the two main commercial sites. 

Olympic torch route - Day 8 Cardiff

Cardiff Castle in the 15th century

Cardiff, a county and parliamentary borough on the Taff, and the principal town of Glamorgan. Though Cardiff has been termed the Welsh Chicago, it is a place of considerable antiquity. As Tibia Amnis it was a military station of importance in Roman days, and one of its gateways has been discovered in the grounds of the castle, which was built on the lines of the Roman rampart. The castle itself is an elaborate modern restoration of the medieval fortress, but the ruins of the Norman keep built by Robert of Caen stand on a moated mound in the centre of the court. The curthouse tower is said to have been for 20 years the prison of Robert of Normandy.

Besides the castle the only other ancient building in the town is St John's church, a fifteenth century edifice with a fine Perpendicular tower. The old church of St Mary, which was connected with a Benedictine priory, was destroyed by a flood in 1607. Cardiff also once possessed some habitations of Black and Grey Friars, and the ruins of the house which Lord Herbert built out of the material of the latter still stand near the City Hall.
Though always a port, Cardiff's commercial prosperity dates only from the middle of docks, and it is the largest coal port in the world. The town is well built and its streets are spacious. A fine group of buildings consisting of the City Hall, the Assize Courts, the Welsh National Museum, and the University College have been erected in Cathays Park, and there is a large library in another part of the town. 

From Glamorganshire 1911 one of the many useful resources for Cardiff as transcribed on its Genuki page

The present-day Cardiff Castle is open to the public, and its website includes a timeline of its history, dating back to Roman times. There is more information about Cardiff at Vision of Britain. The website of the Glamorgan Record Office includes a section Cardiff: the building of a capital

 

Same BMD databases, different sites: Part One - England and Wales

There are many popular records that you can find on more than one genealogy site, and if you don't find what you want one one site, it's a good idea to try another one. There are two different reasons for this. Some records, like most British censuses, have been indexed independently by different service providers; in other cases exactly the same database appears on more than one site, but different search engines mean that one site may give better results than another. This is why it is sometimes worth using a commercial site to search indexes that are free elsewhere.

The Civil Registration birth, marriage and death indexes for England and Wales are available on a number of sites; none of them, sadly, provided by the General Register Office itself. The most widely used is FreeBMD an astonishing example of volunteer effort on a massive scale. As the name implies, it is free to use, and because it has only one function, searching the BMD indexes, it is expressly designed for that purpose, and it works extremely well.

Birth marriage and death indexes are also on Ancestry, Findmypast, TheGenealogist, BMDindexes and FamilyRelatives. BMDindexes is a standalone site which is also part of TheGenealogist, so the indexes are the same, but I can't comment beyond that because I am not a subscriber to either. Ancestry's indexes up to 1915 are the FreeBMD indexes, and are clearly listed as such, but for 1916 to 1983 they have their own indexes. Findmypast and FamilyRelatives have each done their own indexing, so for any period up to 1983 you have a choice of several independently compiled indexes. Indexes from 1984 to 2005 were 'born digital' and the databases used to be sold by the GRO to commercial companies. No indexes more recent than this are available online, with the exception of 2006 births and marriages which are on Findmypast only.

I may look at the relative merits of the various indexes some other time, but what I set out to discuss here was the reasons you might choose to one site rather than another for the same database. Specifically, why would you search for BMDs on Ancestry rather than FreeBMD? I have to admit that I nearly always use FreeBMD. The FreeBMD updates don't reach Ancestry straight away, although this is a minor issue, since most of the activity on FreeBMD these days is in the post-1915 period that they don't share with Ancestry. The question of coverage is still relevant, though, since even for the earlier years FreeBMD is not complete. The FreeBMD site itself has very informative coverage charts, which show you where the gaps are, but you won't find this information on Ancestry.

Another advantage of FreeBMD is that you can search just births, marriages or deaths, or across all three, and you can restrict your search to very specific time periods. This is possible on Ancestry, up to a point, but unless you want a single year or quarter, you can only select +/- 1, 2, 5, 10 or 20 years. You can also search just births, or marriages, or deaths, but not two or all three unless you want to search a lot of Ancestry's other databases at the same time.

After all this you might wonder why I would ever suggest searching these BMDs on Ancestry at all, since FreeBMD seems so much better. And since FreeBMD is free to use, and Ancestry is a commercial site, surely there is no contest? Well, actually there are several reasons for considering Ancestry. First of all, although it is a commercial site, some of its databases are free, including the FreeBMD ones, so cost is not an issue. Ancestry also has a number of features that can be useful for some searches.

When you search for a forename on Ancestry it will return all the results when that name appears in any part of the forename field, while FreeBMD only returns results where it is the first name, not one of the middle names (although FreeBMD will return middle name results if you put + in front of the forename). I have my own Ancestry search pages set to Old Search, with 'Exact matches only' as the default, but if you use New Search you can set a wider range of individual search options for each field. So a search for 'William' on Old Search will return William, William George, George William etc, and the default search option for the forename field on New Search will also return results like George W. There are other settings that you can experiment with, and the surname field offers both phonetic and Soundex options, which bring different results.

Another potentially useful feature of Ancestry is that surname search results will include those where it appears as the mother's maiden name in the birth indexes, although this only begins in the September quarter of 1911. If you are an Ancestry subscriber, results from FreeBMD indexes will be included in searches across multiple databases, which has the value of convenience.

So it's worth considering all the options, even if you are in the habit of using the same one all the time as a matter of habit. I certainly did when I was preparing the blog post. I shall probably use Ancestry a little more than previously, although FreeBMD will remain my first choice most of the time. But no matter which search option you choose, when it comes to ordering certificates make sure that you do this through the GRO's own Certificate Ordering service, or from the local register office, where it will cost £9.25. Anyone else who offers a certificate ordering service has to use the GRO service, so you might as well go direct and save yourself time and money.

Mappy Monday - Panorama from the top of Snowdon

Wales is the only part of the UK in which I have no personal or family interest, so I sometimes feel that I may be neglecting it. I haven't even visited Wales since the 1960s, although I have had some terrific views of South Wales from the air - it looks wonderful in the morning sunlight at the end of an overnight flight from the USA.

So I was pleased to find that I had an interesting 'map' in one of my books. The book in question is Baedeker's Great Britain 1901, a pocket sized volume of nearly 600 pages, including a number of maps and  some plans of major cathedrals. This is the only panorama, though. I've never seen, or at least I've never notices, a mountain panorama before, although I've seen panoramic views of London and other cities. I find the view to the west particularly interesting, with views of Anglesey, the Isle of Man and Ireland.

This is what Baedeker has to say about the panorama:

The view from the top of Snowdon, though scarcely so wild and grand as some of the mountain-panoramas of Scotland, is very extensive and varied, including the greater part of North Wales, a wide expanse of sea, and upwards of twenty lakes and tarns. The view at sunrise or at sunset is particularly fine; but the summit is often swathed in mist for days at a time. The mist, however, is not always an unmixed evil, as some of the finest effects are caused by its surging or dispersal

I made as good a scan of the panorama as I could, without damaging it or the book, as the binding is fairly tight. The book is in pretty good condition, apart from a small tear to one of the fold-out maps and a slight scuff on the binding. I can't remember what I paid for it, but it wasn't a lot. Definitely one of my best bargains.

  

1911 Scotland, England and Wales - nearly the same, but not quite

We're almost there, the 1911 Census for Scotland will be released (fingers crossed) within hours now, not days. Scotland'sPeople is bracing itself! I wish I could be in Edinburgh for the launch, but the day job takes precedence, and at least I hope I will be able to access it remotely. The site will be under quite some strain to start with, I expect, and if we can't all get access immediately...well, it's been closed for a century, a little longer won't hurt.

By now many of us are familiar with the 1911 Census for England and Wales, so we have a pretty good idea of what to expect. There is one important difference, which is that as in previous census years, the Scottish census was copied into enumerations books, and the household schedules were destroyed. This was an administrative decision by the General Register Office for Scotland. The information gathered was much the same as in England and Wales, and the tabulation was done by machine, as in England and Wales. The extra information gathered was a significant increase on previous censuses, so it will be pored over gratefully by Scottish family historians, myself included.

The lack of household schedules means that we won't be able to see our ancestors' actual handwriting, which is a pity, but a greater pity is that when the enumerators wrote up their books, they will have left out the details that had not been asked for. By this I mean the widows who provided the length of their marriage, and the number of children they had, living and dead, when the question was only addressed to married women. On the English and Welsh schedules these were crossed out by the enumerator, but are still clearly visible.

Birthplace questions - England and Wales

There are some differences in the questions, too.

Like the schedules for Wales, but not England, the Scottish census contains a language question; whether a person spoke English, Gaelic or both. The questions on birthplace and nationality are subtly different, though, more details being asked for in England and Wales, with one exception.

On the schedules for England and Wales the parish of birth is required for anyone born in the United Kingdom. Anyone born elsewhere in the British Empire is asked for the name of the Colony or Dependency, and the Province or State. If born in a foreign country, the name of the country is all asked for, and anyone born at sea is required to write 'at sea'.  

Unfortunately the Scottish census asks for the parish of birth only from people born in Scotland. Anyone born in England or Ireland is only required to put 'England' or 'Ireland'. There is no mention of Wales at all, so it may be assumed to be part of the well-known administrative unit 'EnglandandWales'. Sorry, Wales. Like those born in foreign countries, people born in Colonies or Dependencies are only asked for the name of the country, unless that country was India. And this is where Scotland requires extra information; the Indian-born are asked to state whether or not they were of European origin.

Birthplace questions - Scotland

In both countries, foreign-born people are asked for their nationality; whether British by parentage, naturalized British subject, or of foreign nationality, and if so, which nationality. But only in England and Wales are naturalized British subjects asked for the exact year of their naturalization, and those born outside England and Wales are to state whether they are residents or visitors.

These discrepancies in the questions will make no difference to most researchers, and there is still a lot more detail than in any previous Scottish census, so we will all have plenty of new toys to play with (you did stock up on ScotlandsPeople credits before the price went up on Friday, didn't you?). The difference that will affect most genealogists is that sadly, those of us with Irish-born ancestors in Scotland can't expect to discover their exact birthplaces here. Pity. Oh well, it's back to fiendish ingenuity and the power of prayer again.

Happy Census Release Day, fellow Scots. I'm sure it's going to be PDB* for some of us.

*PDB = Pure dead brilliant!

Birth registration - the great 1874 myth

Births registered in England and Wales 1870-1880

You will often read that registration of births was not compulsory until 1874, so if you are looking for a birth before that date, and cannot find it, it may be because the birth was not registered. Well, yes and no. YES, the law was changed in 1874, but NO, it did not make a significant impact on the rate of registration.

One of the numerous changes made to registration by the 1874 act was that the onus for registration was now placed on the parents, and not the registrar. Parents could be fined for failing to register a birth, but this was not new. From the introduction of registration in 1837, parents could be prosecuted for refusing to supply  details when asked by the registrar, or for refusing to sign the register. And they were. The Sheffield Mercury of 28 October 1837 reports the prosecution of John Wainwright for refusing to sign the register. His defence was that his child had been baptised in the Church of England, and that this was sufficient. In the early days, this was a common misconception, encouraged in some places by the clergy.

It was universally recognised that the wording of the 1836 act was deeply flawed, and it was not until 1874 that many of the problems were addressed. Meanwhile, the Registrar General was rightly concerned that registration of births might be incomplete, and 'pour encourager les autres' there were a number of prosecutions. Handbills were made of the report of Wainwright's prosecution. These could be handed to anyone who showed reluctance to provide information, or to sign the register, and this seems to have been quite effective.

There certainly were some deficiencies in birth registration in the early years, but the rate of non-compliance was much lower than some people would have you believe, and it was not uniform, either in place or time. As you'd expect, it took a little time for people to get the hang of this radical new system; the Superintendent Registrar of Birmingham, William Pare, estimated that in the first quarter of civil registration, July-September 1837, 340 births in his area went unregistered, against 677 that were registered, but in the second quarter only 118 were unregistered, and 905 registered. This is a massive improvement in a very short time. William Farr, who was Deputy Registrar General for many years and can be described as the first government statistician, estimated that the overall rate of non-registration was about 5% for the whole period 1837-1874, and that compliance improved over time. So the rate of non-registration would be much lower than 5%  by 1874, and the change in the law would therefore make no appreciable difference.

The table above is taken from the figures provided by the annual reports of the Registrar General. If the 1874 act had any impact on the rate of registration, you would expect a noticeable increase in births registered in 1875, the year it came into effect. In fact there was a small decrease although that isn't very significant either. So if you fail to find a birth registration before 1875, it is possible that the birth was not registered, but it is more likely that the entry is either mis-indexed or omitted from the index through human error, or the name, date or place of birth are not what you had expected, for a variety of reasons.

William Farr's conclusions can be found in a collection of his writings 'Vital Statistics' published in 1885.
You can also find all of the Annual Reports of the Registrar General of England and Wales from 1836 to 1920 on the HISTPOP site, which also contains very informative essays on Civil Registration and the census.