Deaths & Marriage 1846

[Peter Goodey]

neither birth or death registrations were compulsory by law in England & Wales until 1875.

What I said about births was "There was no penalty until 1875 for a parent failing to report a birth for registration. That is not the same as registration not being compulsory."

My statement about death registration was badly worded and it should have said "From 1837, death registration was compulsory before or immediately after the burial of a body". To avoid clouding the issue, I've ignored the possible intervention of the coroner.

To the best of my knowledge those two statements are correct but I'm ready to be convinced otherwise.

[mfwebb]

My statement about death registration was badly worded and it should have said "From 1837, death registration was compulsory before or immediately after the burial of a body". To avoid clouding the issue, I've ignored the possible intervention of the coroner.

Thanks for that Peter. At least now I know that IF John Webb died when I believe he did (1844 or 1845) then I should be able to find a death certificate as there could not have been a burial without one.

Many thanks,

Malcolm

[Peter Goodey]

Malcolm

That wasn't really what I said. As you know, the law may say that something should happen but that doesn't mean that it necessarily will happen.

As I said earlier on in this thread, "death registration procedures were far from watertight in the early days of the system."

As I understand it, the loophole was that if a body turned up at a church without a registrar's chit, the onus was on the vicar to notify the registrar. I believe this was the part of the procedure that didn't always work.

[margaretparkin]

Advice please I have been searching on and off for the death certs for two ancesters even doing the slow page by page search on line Is the list on line complete I know there is a partial one but I just cannot find these two I have tried parish records but th e vicar of Hunworth was described by a transcriber as not very good at record keeping LDS appear to have christening but no death records I think these deaths probably occurred 1845-6 so are in the time under discussion Where next?
margaret

[Alan Welsford]

Advice please I have been searching on and off for the death certs for two ancesters even doing the slow page by page search on line Is the list on line complete I know there is a partial one but I just cannot find these two I have tried parish records but th e vicar of Hunworth was described by a transcriber as not very good at record keeping LDS appear to have christening but no death records I think these deaths probably occurred 1845-6 so are in the time under discussion Where next?
margaret

Hi Margaret,

So you are trying to trace 2 deaths in the mid 1840s, in Hunworth. Is that the Norfolk one, or is there another, please ?

How can you be so precise about death around 1845 / 1846. I presume you have found them in 1841, but not 1851, but how to pin them down more than that.

By LDS, do you mean the IGI, or are you talking about film ordered in at an LDS research centre ? If the IGI, then I'm sure you know Parish Register data for burials is almost never there.

What have you searched, please ? FreeBMD is a partial (but often near complete) transcription of the GRO indexes, and according to their coverage charts deaths are not totally transcribed for the years you mention (The 3rd quarter of 1846 in particular is "only" about 96% transcribed).

You can manually walk through the GRO indexes, but these are also known to have issues, such that certain births that were registered are either missing from the copy at the GRO, or are not indexed or are mis-indexed. It sounds as if you may have already tried this though.

But unless your two deaths were registered at the same time, you'd have to be quite unlucky to find neither, I think, assuming they were registered.

Alan

[Peter Goodey]

I have tried parish records

What does that mean please? Have you got hold of the parish burial register and searched all the way through from 1841 to 1851? Because that's what you need to do.

If you've already done so and found nothing, you may have reached the end of the road.

[Geoffers]

Advice please I have been searching on and off for the death certs for two ancesters even doing the slow page by page search on line........I think these deaths probably occurred 1845-6 so are in the time under discussion?

Did they leave wills? Norfolk wills for this period are online and free, TNA hsa PCC wills on documents online.

Did they definitely pop their clogs or could they have emigrated under the Poor Law Amendment Act? For which records are held at TNA in document class MH12.

[margaretparkin]

The parish concerned is Hunworth in Norfolk. I have found some of the family in 1841 and I have a will which ties up most of the others
Only one child appears in 1851 which is an older married daughter. The will was of great help here as It mentioned her married name and the names of her children
By 1851 many children were in New York and another branch of the family went to Belize so all accounted for except The mother and youngest daughter

I have trawled through the GRO for the years 1841 to 1852 and cannot find them. I am fairly new to this and was interested in how accurate GRO records were. Tried free BMD with no luck so am really stuck Also I can find no will for the mother
Margaret