Expanding search beyond BMD databases

[dedken]

When you have exhausted all name derivations looking for a civil registration record for someone you know to be dead, what should be the next step in trying to locate the record?

I know that some of the civil registration recording wasn't top notch so should I assume that the record a) doesn't exist at all because it wasn't recorded or b) can be found via another search method that I don't know about?

[Megan Roberts]

When you say that you know someone is dead, is it simply that you know that they must be dead because of the passage of time or for some other reason?

And is it the case that you just don't where they died?

Many of us lose track of a particular ancestor and spend years to find where they ended up and if you do find them it is often a question of luck. This can be for many reasons:

It depends when these events happened. If you go back far enough very few people carried any form of identification and so if they were taken ill or had an accident which led to their death whilst away from home then there might never be any way of identifying them. Many parish records will reveal burials of those "known only unto God".

Of course there will be those who will have made a conscious effort to distance themselves from their friends and families.

If someone was working away from home when taken mortally ill and as a consequence their death was registered by work mates then it might have been registered differently from how the family would have registered it. For instance: say a man was named William John Smith on his birth certificate, but always called John Smith, because William was his father's name, his workmates might have registered his death as John Smith not realising that his birth name was William John Smith, or they may have used John William Smith.

Unfortunately there are no set rules to follow.

[dedken]

I see what you mean. I hadn't considered someone dying "on the road" as it were and potentially being buried under a different name.

In this instance I feel I have good reason to suspect an adolescent death. I'm looking for a girl born in 1870 (no birth record either.) The only record I can find her on is the 1881 census putting her at 11. On the 1911 census her father writes the number 5 in the "children who have died" column. Two of them I know about, there is another girl that I also cannot trace, and this girl. Which leaves one more child that I have not yet discovered - possibly another stillbirth. The rest of his children all reached adulthood. Based on this I think it reasonable to assume death prior to the 1891 census? and certainly prior to the 1911 one. And at such a young age probably the same county? I know some girls were sent away to work as servants but there would surely be a record of that - I mean, if she had died in employment surely they would have known who she was?

I suppose I'll likely never find out what happened to her.

[Pam Downes]

I presume that you're referring to a death which occurred between 1 July 1837 (when civil registration began) and approximately 26 December 2007 (December quarter 2007 is the last one available to search online).

The GRO Index from 2008 onwards up to almost the present day (think it's up to the previous complete quarter in the current year, but don't quote me on that) can be found at the places listed here.
https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/ce...FamilyHistory1

Have you been looking at FreeBMD (still a work in progress) or the full GRO Index? Note that (to the best of my belief) the index prior to 1916 on Ancestry is taken from FreeBMD; Findmypast have taken all of their indexes from the GRO itself.
Remember that the GRO now has a more accurate index of 'historic' deaths (to1957) available on its website.
https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/ce...es/default.asp

Some counties have produced their own BMD indexes. https://www.
ukbmd.org.uk/
Select a county, then look down the results list for a county council website (it might not be the first one listed). Not all of the counties have all of the registration districts/events indexed yet. These indexes are usually more accurate than the GRO Index because they are taken from the original registers. Though that does not mean that they are free of name variants.

In the very early years not all deaths were recorded.
Some deaths are not recorded immediately. e.g. the deaths of the people who died in the Flixborough disaster in June 1974 weren't registered until 1975 ( think it was June quarter).

If you have a rough idea of when a death might have occurred have you searched for a burial in local parish registers/cemetery records or an obituary in local newspapers?

Have you considered that the person might have emigrated? I spent about fifteen years searching for my great-grandfather's death and after mentioning his name on this forum, in less than the same number of hours, people had found a death record, an emigration record, report in a local newspaper (now online at FMP), etc.

There are a lot of deaths registered as Unknown Unknown. The eight registered in March quarter 1857 in Whitby registration district might have been sailors drowned when their ship sank. If the name of the ship couldn't be found then the chances of being able to identify the sailors would be a lot slimmer than today when we're used to carrying identification with us.

Have you considered that the person might have changed their first name? One great-aunt and her brother both used their second names as adults.

What surname are you searching for? Perhaps we could give other variants/misspellings for you to try.

Pam

[Guy Etchells]

I see what you mean. I hadn't considered someone dying "on the road" as it were and potentially being buried under a different name.

In this instance I feel I have good reason to suspect an adolescent death. I'm looking for a girl born in 1870 (no birth record either.) The only record I can find her on is the 1881 census putting her at 11. On the 1911 census her father writes the number 5 in the "children who have died" column. Two of them I know about, there is another girl that I also cannot trace, and this girl. Which leaves one more child that I have not yet discovered - possibly another stillbirth. The rest of his children all reached adulthood. Based on this I think it reasonable to assume death prior to the 1891 census? and certainly prior to the 1911 one. And at such a young age probably the same county? I know some girls were sent away to work as servants but there would surely be a record of that - I mean, if she had died in employment surely they would have known who she was?

I suppose I'll likely never find out what happened to her.

First thing I would consider due to you looking for a girl is did she marry between census entries?
If she married then any death record would be under her married name.

If marriage is ruled out I would then look for a burial record in the locality of where you have last heard of her and work out from there.
The National Burial Index may help in this case.

Cheers
Guy

[Megan Roberts]

I'm looking for a girl born in 1870 (no birth record either.) The only record I can find her on is the 1881 census putting her at 11. On the 1911 census her father writes the number 5 in the "children who have died" column. Two of them I know about, there is another girl that I also cannot trace, and this girl. Which leaves one more child that I have not yet discovered - possibly another stillbirth.

You are making a few assumptions here. Why not give us a few more details here and see if people can find something that you may have missed. A fresh pair of eyes can often help.

Give us their names and the census references that you have etc.

[dedken]

Thanks all - a few good searching tips there. I have a sub to Ancestry so I've been using their BMD and hadn't (until just now) searched the GRO. But I've also searched the Northamptonshire Parish Records and got a similar lack of answers. One of the problems here is that when you have a family name that has been subject to phonetic derivations and transcription errors as much as mine the route to finding people sometimes becomes quite scenic to say the least. The list of phonetic derivations includes:

Bazley (as it is now)
Bazeley
Bazely
Baseley
Basely
Basley
Bazzley

Then there are the transcription errors:

Bezley
Besley
Barley
Bareley
Bayley
Bayeley
Bageley
Bagley
Begley
Rasley

The Ancestry search facility is not great when trying to include possible name derivations, for example if I search under Bazley it rarely turns up any Bazeley and vice versa. I often get much better results by searching under first name and place of birth and not entering a surname at all!

[...]

In this instance the girl is one Mary Ann BAZLEY (my surname, my spelling!) She appears with her family on the 1881 census (under the name 'BEZLEY' - Class: RG11; Piece: 1558; Folio: 105; Page: 6) with her age listed as 11. Looking again in case I missed her on the 1971 census (her family is present under the correct name BAZLEY - Class: RG10; Piece: 1492; Folio: 25; Page: 1), I conclude she is definitely not present which means she was probably born later and was not aged 11 in 1881. I carried out a birth search in GRO as suggested and that did not turn up any Mary Ann Bazley (including checked derivations above) born in Daventry between 1971 and 1975. I did find a Mary Ann Begley born in Daventry in 1871 but have ruled her out as belonging to another family that is on the census. So I am unable to establish the year of birth even though I know that she definitely existed. I suppose the next thing is to manually inspect the images of the Daventry parish register to check there hasn't been an omission by Ancestry staff.

A GRO search for the death also turns up no matches. I enabled phonetic variations with the age set to 18 +/-10yrs from 1883 +/-2yrs, every two years up to 1903. A search of the burial record fails to find her either, that said I haven't searched the National Burial Index as I was not aware of it.

I have of course already checked the parish and civil record for marriages but nothing turns up that I would consider worth investigating. Again I could manually inspect them to check there hasn't been an omission but when you don't have a marriage date that could mean looking at 20 years' worth of records!

My "hunch" is that she didn't emigrate. This is based on having looked closely at the Bazley diaspora from this part of the world. They were simple descendents of ag lab. Families tended to live in close proximity and only the odd one or two moved very long distances away at that time. But I guess that's like a lot of families! In any case a glimpse at Ancestry immigration search results doesn't reveal anything I'd want to pay extra to look at. Also I keep returning to the "5 children who have died" that the father wrote on the 1911 census return. That said he also wrote that he had 6 children when he had at least 9, but by then he was deaf and maybe was losing his faculties a little.