When indexing death records, how should I record a still-birth (baby born dead)?

Denice Varley

When indexing death records, how should I record a still-birth (baby born dead)?

Ontymay

Hi Denice,

Which project are you working on? Do the project instructions help? Usually there will be instructions about how to index a still birth in the "What to index" or "What to remember" section.

If not - index birth and death as the same dates

cheers

Julia

Marian McDonald_1

@Denice Varley Hi. If you could share your batch number with the community we would be able to better assist you. If it has to do with the 1950 census there is a category listed to the right for help. If it is indexing you can look on your toolbar and click the share my batch button or post your batch number which you can find at the top of the page [XXXX-XXX].

Thank you for indexing.

Melissa S Himes

It is always important to provide the batch code with your question since the project instructions might have will specific instructions about still-borns. Usually they will tell you to record them as deaths. But ...

The new Washington, U.S. County Death Register project instructions tell us:

• Some images contain records with birth records on one side and death records on the other. Index only the death records on the image. The birth information will be included in a separate project. 
• You may encounter a stillborn birth recorded among other death records. These should be indexed as deaths. If you find a record of a stillborn birth among other birth records in the project, do not index it. These will be indexed as births in another project.

So, for that project, if the stillbirth is recorded with other births, then don't create a record. But, if the stillbirth is recorded among death records, then you do create a record.

The fields helps, which are accessed by clicking on the purple question that appears when you click on a field usually provide additional instructions, like this field help for Age:

Type the age in years.

If fractions of years were recorded for the age, round down to the nearest full year. If less than 1 year was recorded or a child was stillborn, type the age as 0 (zero).