Tagging Isue with England & Wales Birth Registrations

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Stewart Millar said: I have been meaning to ask this question for some time - hoping it would come right.

Attaching via the Source Linker England & Wales Birth Registrations automatically tags the Name only.

It does not tag the "Birth".

I believe at some time in the past it did tag the "Birth" as well.

Why would FS consider a "Birth" registration not to be related (tagged) to the birth? Any answers?

I have to remember every time to go in and add that particular tag to the attachment.

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Tom Huber said: If I remember, in the past, the tags that were applicable to the record being attached were checked.

I'm going to speculate that maybe there are records in this record set that are not birth records, but of a Christening or Infant Baptism. Therefore, the idea is that the patron using the source-linker will check birth if it is appropriate for the record.

Just some speculation on the matter.

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Stewart Millar said: These are the civil registration birth indexes - absolutely no connection with any church rituals at all.

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Tom Huber said: Definitely makes no sense.

I really don't find that unusual. It is like the Delayed Birth Certificates that are marked Death Certificates. There are cases where the records are very sloppy, even to the point of the source-linker not accurately recording what the original records are.

I've mentioned this instance before, but FamilySearch is, at the point, appearing to be more about quantity and less about quality (sadly).

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Stewart Millar said: Interestingly - and perversely, Death registration indexes which carry an age at death - are tagged to the Birth . . . as well as the death.

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Adrian Bruce said: Curious... I've tried the huge statistical sample of two and one example is seen here:



As stated, it doesn't tag the birth. It does offer an event of Birth Registration to bring over to the Person in FS FT.

Has someone come over all pedantic and decided that these are records of Birth Registrations and not Births? Believing perhaps that Registration might be years after the event? Whereas in the UK Registrations is "mandatory" within a few weeks of birth so the difference between Birth and Birth Registration is moot - especially when you're just working in whole years.

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Mike Ericson said: Agree totally. At the moment, one has to attach the source, then go back to the main entry, refresh the page (because the source doesn't appear until one does so, and then manually tag the birth field. A direct tag would make life much simpler.

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Vivien Penelope Brown said: I just wrote the feedback below and then saw this thread that was started over 2 year ago, yes over two, years ago. I'm not a programmer but this does not seem like it would be an extremely difficult thing to fix...so I'm bringing it up again!

When attaching an England and Wales Death Registration Index to a person in source linker the death record is automatically tagged to a person's death. However, when attaching an England and Wales Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008 to a person the birth is NOT automatically attached. I have to go in and manually tag it to the birth. Is there any way the birth event can automatically be tagged to the birth in this situation?

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Paul said: There is a comparison here with events that have been indexed as a Baptism instead of a Christening. Because Baptism is a Custom Event and not a Vital the details are not carried across, event though the nature of the event is usually identical.

Same with Birth Registration being a Custom Event, so there is no link to the Birth fields in the Vitals section.

However, there is consistency with SOME of the death registration records. The newer ones are labelled as registrations so, I believe,being Custom Events, are NOT linked to the Death field in Vitals. However, the majority are shown as "Deaths" (not registrations), so can be carried across.

Unfortunately, there are a number of perverse practices like this in the program.

(For no logical reason FamilySearch has effectively split one group of records - England & Wales Death Registrations - into two collections.)

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Paul said: Just to illustrate the inconsistency with Death Registration records. The screenshots show one record was indexed as a Death Registration and the other as a Death. So , even within the same group of records, in one case the event can only be moved across to the Other Information section (and nothing can be done, at this stage, with the birth), but in the other case both birth and death can be carried over to the Vitals section.

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Stewart Millar said: I started this two years ago - and as time moves on it gets even stranger . . .

There might be some concievable (but twisted and illogical) reason why a "Birth Registration" is not considered valid evidence of a birth . . . but that gets even stranger when you consider how "Death Registrations" for England & Wales are treated . . .

1837-1865 Vitals-Death - updated with year
1866-Q1 1969 Vitals-Death - updated with year & Vitals-Birth - updated with estimated birth year.
Q2 1969-1977 Vitals-Death - updated with year & Vitals-Birth - updated with full given birth date.
1978-1983 Other-Death - updated with year & Vitals-Birth - updated with full given birth date.
1984-2004 Other-Death - updated with Month & year & Vitals-Birth - updated with full given birth date.
2005-2007 Vitals-Death - updayed with month & year & Vitals-Birth - updated with full given birth date.

So - a death registration - on most occasions will update the the Vitals-Birth data and the Vitals-Death data . . . but for some dates will not update the Vitals-Death and instead updates the death information to "Other".

As to the "Birth Registrations" . . . now, for the past couple of years, seems to be downgraded as not valid enough to update the Vitals-Birth data - which I know that they did at an earlier time . . . creating the added task to always have to remember to go back in to properly tag the "Birth Registration" to the birth.

For over a 40+ year career in IT - I feel that if I actually wrote a specification to reflect the conditions and results outlined above - I would be laughed at.

I can think of no sensible reason why FS cannot straigtened out this twisted illogical logic as it applies to birth and death registrations.

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Vivien Penelope Brown said: I totally agree with Stewart. It is totally illogical!

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Adrian Bruce said: Working purely from fallible memory, there are several formats of the England & Wales indexes to death certificates. Some of the format changes are "obvious" from the data content, such as the appearance of the full date of birth. Some are more subtle. I would speculate that the changes of behaviour that Stewart identifies above have similar dates to the format changes.

However, none of those changes provide any justification for not mapping the registration date to the death date. The rules about when deaths have to be registered have not changed for some considerable time, I believe. (Who, how and where - yes). In the UK, a death has to be registered (or to have started that process) in order to permit burial or cremation. The time lapse is therefore minimal. Given that the DC index only gives us a year, about the only time death and registration date differ at the level that we are dealing with, is when the death is in December and the registration in January - and even then, the majority of December deaths will be registered in December.

To get all pedantic over it being a registration date not a death date from 1978 to 2004 (using Stewart's numbers) therefore has no justification when identical issues before 1978 have been ignored.

By the way, there are occasions when death and registration will be very different - I am never totally clear on the process for declaring someone dead after their disappearance, but if a death certificate is produced, that would be one of these occasions. However, so far as I know, this difference has applied for ages.

Similar comments apply to birth registration - the gap between the two events tends to be rather greater, but that's been the situation since 1837 and is only an issue when the 2 events cross a year boundary because, again, exact dates are not provided on the index. So ( approximation follows) in 11 cases out of 12 birth and birth registration have the same date (because the date is just a year). NB- for clarity - the UK has never had Delayed Registration of Births in the way other countries have, when the difference could be years.

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Stewart Millar said: For England & Wales birth and death registrations - the rules are:

Birth Registrations - from 1875, parents have 42 days to register the birth otherwise a fine can be imposed - registration index gives the Quarter & Year the registration took place.

On a "fun" note - I have encoutred a nice lady who, rather like the Queen, enjoyed celebrating two birthdays per year - the official birthday (as per the certificate) and the real birthday as per the family knowledge (avoiding the fine). Personally I have encountered several certificates researched where the difference between the declared date of birth and the registration date was exactly 42 days - possible cause for suspicion.

From 1837 to 1875 it was the responsibility of each local registrar to find and ensure all births were registered in their sub-registration district - interestingly, paid by the number of registrations with some obvious consequences of missed or dubious registrations.

"Delayed" or missed registrations can be made at any later time (years later) - causes the registration to be made at the time (quarter/year) of the actual registration with a manual note added to the index quarter/year of the actual birth referring to the later quarter/year of the actual registration.

Death Registrations have for some time - not entirely sure if coincident with the start of registration - been tied to the rules for burial needing a death certificate and hence registration is invariably quite prompt.

The data supplied for for both birth and death registrations - until recent/modern times - required no inspection. Meaning that what was recorded in terms of names, dates, ages and places was down to the informant - the biggest cauality with regard to death registrations being the accuarcy of the age or the year of birth on a death registration.

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Adrian Bruce said: Thanks for that Stewart.

As far as "delayed" registration of births goes, yes, the facility is there - I had forgotten about it. The fact that I had forgotten, suggests strongly that the number of instances where it happens is very low. I've not found one yet in my families (and I am UK-based). Whereas I have a mini-clump in Canada.

My experience is that if registration of a birth was missed,it was never followed up with a delayed registration. Or have I never looked? (Grin)

Anyway, if FamilySearch made a conscious decision to stop mapping the registration to the vital for accuracy reasons, it would be nice for them to tell us and justify it.

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David Newton said: Death registrations can be delayed. The usual reason is if an inquest is held.

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Adrian Bruce said: That's true, thanks. Though even there, if the date from the index is simply a year, I would suggest that most deaths and post-inquest registrations take place in the same year.

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Mike Ericson said: For crying out loud! How does a thread referring to BIRTH registrations get highjacked into discussions about DEATH registrations? (incidentally, I would suggest that the number of "delayed" death registrations be so insignificant as to be not worth worrying about).

When we are talking about births in the early/mid 19th century, it is quite reasonable to have an "estimated" birth date to within about 3 months for genealogical purposes. The search engines default to a +/- 2 year span anyway.

The main point is -- how flaming hard can it be to put a check box on the record so as to automatically tie the record to the birth field -- it's not rocket science.

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Paul said: Mike

If you read the other comments carefully you will see a problem here still has a connection with the inconsistency in being able to carry BIRTH detail across in the source linking process.

The original poster, Stewart, appears to have no problem concerning his topic being "hijacked". Similar issues apply whether we are discussing Birth of Death Registration records for England & Wales, so we have not drifted that far off course from the original discussion.

On your last sentence, it appears FamilySearch has decided a birth registration record should not be treated as if it was a birth. Hence, it ending up under Other Information instead of in the Vitals section, after the source has been linked to the ID.

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Stewart Millar said: The detail on the Death registrations was to highlight the fact that FS sees the death registrations as a valid source for the Birth in "Vitals" . . . whereas, the actual Birth registrations are not viewed as a valid source for the Birth in "Vitals" - instead we have to manually revisit the attached source and set the tag to "Birth".

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Adrian Bruce said: Actually, Mike, although I think that the FS policy over not populating the Vital dates is seriously awry and needs to be fixed, I would suspect that it's a bit more than just slapping a check box into the interface. The data needs to be set up in the first place. But nevertheless, it should just be a matter of cloning the instructions for one sub-collection in order to do it. So more than a one-liner but not rocket science.

I'd be slightly more concerned over the effect on profiles where the index record has already been attached - will there be any impact on them if the data has to change from registration to Vital - I've no idea, but it needs to be thought about.

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Mike Ericson said: Hi Adrian. Sorry, I don't quite understand what you are saying. The data is already set up - surely if ticking a box for "Name" transfers the data to the Name field, then a check box for "Birth" would transfer the data to the birth field, the same as it does when a Baptism/Christening record contains a birth date as well as a Christening date. N'est Pas ?

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Vivien Penelope Brown said: I’m with you Mike. All I want is a box to automatically tag the Birth Registration to the birth so I don’t have to remember to go in and spend time tagging it manually. As Mike points out, they have already done in it the Name field so how hadr would it be to tag the birth field as well? Yes, it’s not an exact birth date, and yes there sometimes is a lag between the birth and the time it is registered as well as all the rest of the points that have been brought up. However, bottom line is that it is evidence that a person was born!

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Paul said: It's not a case of difficulty, just FamilySearch's decision to do things this way.

Mike - you mention Baptism/Christening record as if they were one and the same thing. Well, they are of course, but the FamilySearch programming does not read it that way. If a record has been indexed as a Baptism, the detail only goes to the Other Information section. It has to have been literally indexed as a Christening to go to the matching field in the Vitals section.

Again, this relates to the way FamilySearch managers / programmers view matters: not how the average user / genealogist would think logical.

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Adrian Bruce said: "The data is already set up" - but is it? Something is there but what has it been labelled as? Take the example of the later Death Registrations. They generate 2 dates - one for birth, one for either death or death registration. The only thing that determines which date goes where is how the items have been labelled. Clearly some have been set up as death registrations - what's needed to redirect them? I have absolutely no idea, which is why I'd be suspicious that it's not a 5 minute job.

To be clear - I think putting the stuff into registration not vital dates is way too pedantic and creates work and the possibility of errors. I just fear that it might not be a 5 minute job to fix it.