Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 89

Sadly, not all events were recorded. Although most people voluntarily registered their children’s births, they were only legally obliged to before 1875 if specifically told to do so by a registrar. It is thought that up to 15% of births escaped registration in this period.

If you cannot find a birth, it could be because you are looking in the wrong year or the birth was indexed under a variant. But if you keep failing, you may have to accept that you are descended from ancestors who, knowingly or not, made life harder for their genealogist descendants by not registering their child’s birth.

Missing the deadline. In 1875, parents became legally obliged to register their children’s births within six weeks, and could be fined if caught not doing so. This had absolutely no effect on the rate of registration. However, thereafter, if parents missed the six-week deadline, they might register the birth but lie about the date of birth to avoid the threat of a fine.

Incorrect logging of marriages. It used to be thought that almost all marriages were correctly registered, but recently studies are showing that a great deal were never properly logged by the registrar general. However, most deaths were registered.

Unregistered babies do not stand out in the crowd, but decomposing corpses certainly would and, in any case, death certificates have been required since 1837 before burial can take place.

If you cannot find an ancestor’s birth record but you know the names and years of birth of siblings (for example, from a census return – see Chapter Six), seek the births of siblings instead. Their birth records will tell you what you need to know about your ancestor’s parents. If your ancestor was born before 1837 but had siblings born after, seek their birth records instead.

Parish registers (see Chapter Ten) are a poor substitute for General Registration records, but if you cannot find an event and have a pretty good idea where it would have taken place, try seeking a baptism, marriage or burial record instead, either in the original register or using parish register indexes such as the International Genealogical Index (see here).