Early Civil Registration - the Huddersfield registrars

In my last post I mentioned a letter from an aspiring candidate, hoping to be appointed registrar of births and deaths for Holmfirth. At the time I had only looked at the first page of the letter, so I didn't know the man's name, and whether or not he was appointed. Well, the wait is over, and I can report that the man in question was Richard Harrison, a grocer - registrars often combined registration duties with their existing occupations, which in his case was that of grocer. He had previously written to the Guardians offering his services in June 1837.

There is a great deal of correspondence in the file (Ref MH 12/15063 - Poor Law Union Correspondence: Huddersfield 1834-1837) including several letters regarding registrars' appointments. Quite a number of people were keen to become registrars, especially for the sub-district of Huddersfield itself. The file contained some letters from the applicants themselves, and many testimonials with long lists of signatures from local residents in support of the candidates. Richard Harrison had written his first application in June 1837, but the Guardians had refused to elect a clerk at their meetings in June and September so may have thought that a reminder was in order when he wrote for a second time in November.

The four men who competed for the Huddersfield registrarship were Joseph Battye, parish clerk, William Reed, linen-draper, Thomas Pitt (occupation unknown) and the successful candidate William Bradley, auctioneer. William Bradley and Richard Harrison were also appointed as the two registrars of marriages for the whole of Huddersfield registration district.

There were nine other sub-districts in Huddersfield, and when the Guardians finally appointed registrars of births and deaths, the following men were the successful candidates:

Almondbury - Joseph Dean, master of the poorhouse
Kirkheaton - George S Dyson, schoolmaster
Kirkburton - James Binns, clothier
New Mill - John Ibberson, wool weaver and spinner
Honley - Charles James Lancaster, relieving officer
Meltham - Joseph Taylor, clothier
Lockwood - Rev Francis William Dyer
Slaithwaite - John Roberts, surgeon
Golcar- John Wilkinson, clothier


 

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.

Short-lived Registration Districts

When civil registration of births, marriages and deaths began in England and Wales in 1837, the new registration districts were based on Poor Law Unions. These were groupings of parishes that had been created in 1834. The Clerk to the Board of Guardians was the senior officer in a Poor Law Union, and a Superintendent registrar was in charge of each registration district. Registrars of births, deaths and of marriage reported to the superintendent registrar, and  none of the registrars was salaried, but were paid fees for the events they registered, certificates issued, and some other duties.

Every Clerk to the Guardians was offered the post of Superintendent Registrar, in addition to his existing job, and in most cases they accepted, because the two posts could be conveniently combined. Where they declined the offer, another suitable candidate had to be found, and this was not always successful. In November 1837 the Clerk of the Lewes union wrote to the Registrar General

'in consequence of the remuneration for the Superintendent Registrars being inadequate to the trouble given no respectable person can be found to fill the office'

As a result, some unions were soon combined for registration purposes only. but for a short time there were some now unfamiliar names among the list of districts. The districts of Hursley and Sedgefield existed briefly in the first quarter (September 1837) before disappearing forever, followed by Buntingford, Cerne, Chailey, High Peak and West Firle before the end of the year. Dulverton, Lanchester and Whitchurch also vanished, but were re-constituted as registration districts some years later. Chailey and West Firle were joined to Lewes, to which was also added Newhaven in 1838. So the Lewes clerk had good reason to comment on the difficulty of filling the posts in his area.

Source: HO39/4 Home Office correspondence Registrar General's Office 1837