Birth certificate details
 

I've just downloaded an 1838 digital image, and realise that nowhere does it say where the child was born.
The only address on the image is the residence of the informant. This is infuriating, since in 1841, the family is in the workhouse, and in 1891 the subject of the certificate gives the workhouse area as his place of birth.
Does anyone know when this changed?

A lot of the early birth certificates do seem to have just the parish in "when and where born" but I have found a transcription of one from 1843 which has an exact address, so there doesn't seem to have been a hard and fast rule at that time.

The provided heading simply says "when born". I looked at an 1865 birth cert and it said "when and where born".

I imagine that the authorities realised pretty quickly what problems it would cause, and changed things. I've got an 1841 cert that I'm fairly sure gives the birthplace.

The earlier cert I have is 1838 Q4 and that states 'When and were born'.

This is in deepest rural Norfolk. I wonder if it was an error that was corrected very quickly, but only when the forms were reprinted? When I started researching, and visiting the churches, they still hadn't filled up the marriage registers that had been started in 1837.

I have a few early certs which have only the vaguest address. Presumably the Vicar/Registrar thought it wasn't important because everyone knew where so-and-so lived.

OC

In the 1980s, "Riverside Cottage, Xham" would reach my great-aunt. Admittedly, when I accepted a lift from a stranger (:eek: - different times!) and mentioned her, he said, "Oh yes, I know Mrs Y"


Granny's birth certificate in the 1890s only names the village.


Interestingly, someone has posted the digital image of a birth in a Norfolk village in the 1860s, and the heading there only says when born, though in this case the hamlet is named.

So is it just the heading on the digital image that sometimes says When Born and not where? (as opposed to a pdf or a proper cert). Did you only notice the heading because, in this case, there was no place of birth recorded?

I think a "proper" certificate will have used the stationery available at the time. The old ones I've got say things like 3/87 20,000, which I always assumed to be the date and the print run.

I assume (dangerous, I know!) that the digital images use the contemporary headings at the tops of the pages. While these are the modern renderings, I've assumed that they've looked, and used what was given.

And yes, it was because the place of birth - and the choice was the village, or a workhouse 15 miles away - wasn't given that I noticed it did not seem to be a requirement.

Even in the 1980's there were some rural people whose address was just their name and the village where they lived, plus of course the postcode.

I was just going to ask if they would be both in the same sub-district, being that far apart, but of course that's something you don't get with a digital download!!

The Poor Law Unions were the basis of the registration districts. The distance was only an issue for the paupers, who would have to walk to the workhouse, and then back to their own villages. None of the baptisms of the children give any hint as to where they were actually born. I'm tempted to acquire a few more certificates.... though the poor mother had fifteen children, and eleven after the start of civil registration.

Wondering if you could find a baptism which might give you place of birth.

Very few of the children were baptised in the parish, Julie. It might be the case that a chapel was attached to the workhouse.Only the correspondence records survive for the workhouse, so the children might have been baptised there, and the records don't survive.

Quite a few of mine were baptised in the workhouse, it was a given (certainly pre 1837) that if you were born in the workhouse you were baptised there, for settlement reasons if nothing else. For my family, these are always recorded in the parish church register as they occur.

OC

I'm still wondering of the village and the workhouse were in the same sub-district. If you know they were not (the 1841 census would tell you), then maybe if you spoke nicely to the local RO they might investigate to confirm the sub-district?!!

Wouldn't the full GRO birth cert give the sub-district anyway? I know it would mean paying a bit more.

But also we might be able to figure it out from the other names with the same page number?

Exactly, I was just trying to think of a cheaper way!

If it had been in Lancs then LancsBMD gives you the sub-district, as do quite a few other local BMD sites, but I don't think there is one for Norfolk.

On the assumption that there was a different registrar for each subdistrict, I have a death in the same quarter with the same registrar.

So, was that the subdistrict that covers the WH or the one that covers the village (or are they both in the same one?)

The workhouse would be North Walsham - which I can see from the census. The village - Edgefield - would be Holt.

The Registrar, John Banks, appears to have been a surgeon in Holt.

Oooh, might a surgeon be the only sort of person who might cover more than one subdistrict? Or was that not allowed?! Can you now be sure this birth was not in the WH?

There is an interesting Q & A entry in the December issue of "Family Tree" magazine about an 1837 death cert which doesn't give the place of death, and the answer includes the following:

The schedules attached to the 1836 Act... omitted one crucial... pice of information, namely, the place where the event in question took place. It didn't take the newly-appointed registrars long to spot the problem, and on 3 July 1837 ... Thomas Lister, the Registrar General, issued an Order for inserting in the Register the Place of Birth or Death. Thousands of registers had already been printed and distributed to the local registrars and Lister wasn't about to spend vast amounts of money in produring replacements. Instead he ordered that "every Registrar of Births and Deaths shall... inquire the place of the Birth or Death and shall enter... after the date, the name of the Parish or Place in which the child was born... or... in which the deceased person died." As with all new systems, it took a while for everything to get up to speed

Thanks, Kite, for a definitive answer which makes perfect sense.