A surprise twin turns up?? Help please

[KiteRunner]

In answer to Merry's query, Charles was baptised at St Leonards 30/4/1865, so presumably you can be baptised without the birth having been registered with the appropriate authorities.

Yes, certainly - there is no requirement for a birth to be registered before baptism, and actually some vicars used to say it was wrong for a child's Christian name to be registered on a BMD certificate before baptism.

[Val and George]

Thankyou for clarifying that Kiterunner

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

The certificate I purchased was through the GRO 10/10/1997

I meant the date the registration took place in 1865! (ie between 1st April and 30th June)

I had wondered if the baptism was after the registration, as it is POSSIBLE for the sex of a child to be erm......not obvious, and maybe they thought at first that had a girl but then realised the child was a son (before the baptism), but the birth reg was left as it was. I know it's highly unlikely, but SOMEONE has to have the unusual case!
Ah, but if they had MEANT to say Elizabeth at the birth reg, then that makes two Elizabeths, so scrap that idea! lol

[Val and George]

Nice try Merry, but the birth was 8/4/1865 - the baptism 30/4/1865 and the birth was registered 18/5/1865. I guess time enough to decide the sex of the baby!!
I think I will go to the local Mormon church and look through the births on microfische there as ancestry aren't always 100% reliable. Then, I will try and contact the Bethnal Green Registration office to see if they could offer any suggestions.
Failing all that, I will 'assume for the time being' that the registrar mistranscribed the information he was given by the mother and wrote her name in error rather than Charles.
I will try and get to the Mormon church sometime over the next couple of weeks. Oops, have just realised that school holidays start here on friday, and they usually close for the two week duration - not sure if I can make it this week as I still have flu. Oh bother!! Cheers Val

[KiteRunner]

Val, when you say "look at the births on microfiche there as ancestry aren't always 100% reliable", do you mean the BMD indexes? The image of the index on ancestry should be the same as the one on the fiche (although very rarely they are different if there has been a correction made between the filming of the two).

[Olde Crone Holden]

Even today, one tenth of a per cent of live births are of babies of indeterminate sex. Nowadays, a DNA test quickly clears the matter up, but before DNA testing was available, some children would have been registered with the wrong sex.

It has never been possible (and still is not possible today) to change the sex of a child on a birth registration.

OC

[Val and George]

Good grief OC - you learn something every day!! I hadn't known that!

KiteRunner, a couple of times I haven't been able to find a registration on ancestry that I had previously found - a long time ago - when I was trolling through the microfische.
Then again, I suppose there is always the chance that I had made a mistake when recording my original find. I was pretty new to it all in those days.
Thankyou both

[KiteRunner]

Oh yes, there are some whole pages actually missing from ancestry, that's true but it is easy to notice if a whole page is missing so I was assuming that wasn't what you meant?

[BridgetM]

When I was a probationer nurse (many years ago ;) ) I was asked to bath 6 year old Elizabeth, who had an older sister Jane. I was surprised to note Elizabeth was a little boy! Although the parents already had a daughter, they believed Elizabeth was female too! All hell broke loose! On discharge from hospital, the family moved away & poor Elizabeth was renamed!

Mistakes happen ....

[Val and George]

Thankyou Bridget - this makes fascinating reading, I really hadn't imagined this could happen, so I really will keep it as a consideration. Many thanks - Val