anyone come across a birth registered 12 months later?

[congletonian]

Hi all

just found oh's grandmother's birth cert and was surprized to see her date of birth 23/2/1886 but it was registered by the mother on 2/2/1887.Anyone any idea why or how that could happen?? I always thought registrars were very keen and proactive to get parents to register their baby's birth promptly.

She was the last child of 8 and there was a gap of 9 years between her and the next youngest so I'm already feeling a bit suspicious!! Mind you I can talk,we have 3 children aged 37,35 and 16 !!!

Would be interested in any one else having come upon this in their tree and if they were able to research it further??

Thanks for looking
Liz

[Olde Crone Holden]

You say you have her birth cert - is there no note to say that it was a late registration? Or possibly an amendment to an earlier registration?

It would be unusual to register a year late, but not impossible. Late registrations attracted a fine, so they must have been keen to register for some reason.

OC

[Uncle John]

What sort of certificate is it - written or typed out out by a modern registrar or a "photocopy" version from the original register? And a GRO or local certificate? I always favour cock-ups (mis-transcription) to conspiracy (a genuine late registration).

[congletonian]

Hi OC and uncle John

it's a certified copy of an entry of birth,handwritten and signed by the superintendent registrar on 6/5/1949.It says at the top "issued for the purposes of Widows,orphans and old age contributory pensions act".
There's no comment on it as to it being a late registration.I have her original death certificate 18/3/1966 with her death age correctly at 80 years if she was born 23/2/1886.
Would there normally be an explanation on the birth certificate if it was a late registration?

Liz

[Nelde]

Your title caught my eye. My great uncle's birth was registered 65 years later here in B.C. I found his birth information online and rushed into the archives to view the microfilm. He was a curiosity. Adopted out at birth for reasons best left to your imagination. Found his birth mother and his siblings 65 years later. So what would his birth certificate say????? Great curiosity. Well it was filed 65 years later with information provided by my grandmother as a witness. She was born 10 years after him. So I wonder what she witnessed. And all the information was what "the family" created when he found them. I had a number of great aunts and uncles with no birth registrations. They proved their age (for the old age pension) based on school records and their mother's memory. Good thing she lived to 105 so her children could get the pension.;D

[Olde Crone Holden]

I THINK that a late registration would have some reference to being late, even if it was just a "see blah blah". However, it's just dawned on me that a late registration ought to appear in the CORRECT year of birth in the indexes, no matter when it was registered.

Also, I think that death certs are the weakest link in the paper chain - they contain information which is normally hearsay evidence at best.

However, I expect - but cannot prove - that some people just forgot to register a birth and did it a year later, moving the year of birth forward so it looked as if they were registering a newborn. You don't have to produce the baby at registration, lol.

I've recently been involved in a search for a lady's birth cert. She never had one and was approached by the pension service, who told her she was due her pension - this was in the 1960s. They gave her her birth cert (well, she paid for it, but you know what I mean) She lived until she was 98. We have recently discovered that the birth cert the Pensions Dept were working off was the wrong one - she was actually born four years later and given the name of a sibling who had died.

So, as they tell you all the time "A birth certificate is not evidence of identity" and nor is it the evidence of any truth at all!

OC

[congletonian]

Thanks OC and all for the advice,Yes the birth appears in the 1st 1/4 of 1887 registers rather than the 1st 1/4 of 1886 which is when she was actualy born. It will probably remain a mystery!!

Liz

[JayG]

Liz is the cert signed by two registrars? I have a late registration, her birth was registered when they registered her death some 4 months later. Her birth is signed by two registrars.

I've got to disagree with OC the date an event is registered determines the quarter & year it appears in the GRO index. Just think of all the people born in December that aren't registered until the following January, all those registrations appear in the March quarter & not the previous December.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Clutching at straws now but there is always the possibility that a mistake was made when copying out the cert!

JayG

In fact I have found both situations to be the case - births registered (and indexed) in the quarter they occurred AND/OR births registered in the quarter they were registered, lol. The GRO index doesn't always correspond with the local RO index either, so a birth registered in December 1888 in Manchester will appear in the GRO index as first quarter 1889.

Liz - you could phone the local RO as you already have the cert and ask them to confirm the details you have. If they are in a good mood they will!

OC

[Adrian Barnes]

Hi all. It is possible and not unusual for Birth registrations to be out of date. I would hate to try to find my registration as I was registered 21 years after my birth. Cheers AB, Western Australia.

[congletonian]

Hi

thanks for the advice and very interesting to read the discussions about time of registration.I had a look at all my other birth certificates and they pretty much all are within a couple of months of the birth date.
Yes Jay the cert is signed by 2 registrars but there's no comment about it being late.
OC I never even considered phoning the Shrewsbury record office to ask them to check the details,didn't even know it was possible but I shall give it a go tomorrow!!
Adrian your poor descendants if they get into family history and try to find your birth,hope you're keeping good records to help them!!!

Thanks again everyone

Liz

[Uncle John]

OC I never even considered phoning the Shrewsbury record office to ask them to check the details

Just a memory-jog (before OC jumps in!) - it's the REGISTER Office that holds certificates, not the County Records Office.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Unusual for TWO REgistrars to sign a cert, so you already have a nice mystery I think, apart from anything else!

UJ is right - it is the Register Office you want to speak to, not the County Records Office.

OC

[congletonian]

Thanks uncle John and OC

hoping to get somewhere with this tomorrow

Liz

[Night Owl]

This might be useful - scroll down to the sections about date of registration and signature of registration

http://home.clara.net/dixons/Certificates/births.htm#COL8

"If the registrar and the superintendant registrar have both signed in Column 9 then there was something unusual about the registration - such as a late one or a re-registration of a birth"

[Olde Crone Holden]

Yes, looks like it could be an amendment to a registration, or a re registration - maybe a name change.

Hopefully the local RO will reveal all tomorrow!

EDIT - ooh, I wonder! It is permissable to change the forename of a child within a year of birth - maybe they registered her as female originally and it took them a year to come up with a name for her! Or they didn't like the name they had registered her with, and changed it, as they were entitled to do.

OC

[JayG]

One reason for a certificate to be signed by two Registrars is a late registration, as in the case I posted about on page one.

[Uncle John]

EDIT - ooh, I wonder! It is permissable to change the forename of a child within a year of birth - maybe they registered her as female originally and it took them a year to come up with a name for her! Or they didn't like the name they had registered her with, and changed it, as they were entitled to do.

But then there would (should) be an entry in Column 10 giving the new name. There will be no other record of this sort of name change.

[congletonian]

Hello all

well I phoned the registry office today and they will be calling me back tomorrow.Very helpful person at the end of the phone so looking to have some info tomorrow.Thanks to everyone who has given advice and thoughts on why this might have happened.People on this site are so generous with their time and it really is appreciated.
There's nothing in column 10 by the way.

One thing I did turn up today is another Gertrude Higgins born at Shrewsbury in the 3rd 1/4 1885 and died 3rd 1/4 1886 also at Shrewsbury.It probably has nothing to do with OH's family as this one would still be alive when Gertrude Caroline Higgins was born on 23rd Feb 1886.However I wondered if it could possibly be that our G C Higgins was not registered straight away and if G Higgins was her sister,that after she died the parents eventually decided to register her and give her her sister's first name.Sorry I've just re read that and it sounds like gobbledey gook!!

I'll just have to be patient and wait to see what the registry office have to say.

Thanks again
Liz

In column 9 there is the signature of the registrar and of the superintendent registrar

[congletonian]

Well the registrar phoned back this morning and it seems the dates on the certificate are correct so it was a late registration.She said there are no comments in the margin so no help as to why it was late.All she could suggest was that I try and find out what was going on with the family at the time of Gertrude's birth !!! I think that might be difficult and I wouldn't know where to start.

Gertrude was the 8th of 8 children,her mother would have been 40 years old,her oldest sister 20 and her oldest brother 21.The 7th child was 9 when Gertrude was born and only 8 children were born to the marriage all of whom survived.(Gosh it sounds more like a maths problem than family history) The other children are all evenly spaced with 18 to 24 month gaps so either it was just a big gap or she is really the child of her older sister and the registration was left for a year so that the mother and father could be registered as the parents.Am I right in thinking there is absolutely no way of proving this either way??? Of course all the grandparents and aunts and uncles are now dead and they probably wouldn't have known any way,including Gertrude herself !! I seem to recall reading something about someone being brought up by her grandparents not knowing until after they had died that she was in fact the daughter of the person she had always thought was her sister. Family secrets make life hard for family historians don't they ???

Thanks again OC for suggesting phoning the registry office as I hadn't realized I could ask for the info clarification without having to buy the certificate.

Liz