GRO/FreeBMD/Family Search incomplete records

[Guy Etchells]

Don't read too much into that. Others have discredited it.

I take it that you are refering to the article Peter and not the two books written by Michael Foster. He spent something like six years doing research on the GRO indexes "A Comedy of Errors" or The Marriage Records of England and Wales 1837-1899 he then travelled from New Zealand to London to spend some months at the GRO doing in depth research in the records themselves, then more research in 2000 for the second book.
The resulting books in my view are an excellent description of some of the failures of the GRO to fulfil their legal obligations.
Cheers
Guy

[AntonyMMM]

You also need to consider that the rules used to compile the "old" printed indexes , as used for FreeBMD etc. and the rules used to create the indexes seen on the GRO site are different, particularly around how they treat births to unmarried parents (where both are named) and also with maiden names.

It is to be expected (and normal) that the results you get when searching the two indexes will sometimes be different.