Problem with Attaching England & Wales Birth & Death Registrations
This is a topic resurrected after raising it several times in “getsatisfaction” and not yet resolved or justified.
Any “genealogist” I would expect, would consider a Birth Registration to be evidence of a birth.
FamilySearch – in the early days up to around 2016/17 perhaps – any Birth Registrations for England & Wales were attached directly (tagged) to the Birth “Vital” event and the “Name” and did not appear in the “Other” category.
Since that time, such Birth Registration records are now considered as not being related to the Birth “Vital” event and are filed under “Other” – but continue to be tagged to the “Name”.
Meaning that any examination of the sources attached to the Birth will not list the Birth Registration – and it might be the only source pertaining to the birth.
Other sources – for example – census and death registrations can and are linked (tagged) to the Birth “Vital” event.
I believe these other sources are linked to the birth because they either include a birth date or an age at the time of the record from which a birth year can be calculated.
Whereas the Birth Registration does not carry a “birth date” or “age” at registration – and it seems, therefore cannot be attributed to the birth.
Sounds like a rule made by a technician rather than a genealogist.
To correct this mistake of not tagging the birth for Birth Registrations entails having to backtrack and update the Birth tags after every Birth Registration is attached.
There is a similar but slightly different issue regarding Death Registrations for England & Wales . . .
Again, as for birth registrations – in the earlier period of FamilySearch these were attached (tagged) to the Name and the Death – and nothing posted to “Other” . . . however, now:
1837-1865 . . . . continues, correctly, with the same tagging of Death and Name and clearly equates the “Registration Year” with the year of Death (whereas in the Birth Registration – the Registration Year is not considered as the year of Birth) - with no posting of the Death Registration to “Other”.
1866-Q1 1969 . . . . now has “age at death” and so can calculate a birth year and tags the Birth as well.
Q2 1969-1977 . . . . now has a given birth date and continues to correctly tag the death and birth.
1978-1983 . . . . same information as previous but only tags the Birth and adds the Death Registration to “Other” – the Vital “Death” is not tagged.
1984-2004 . . . . similar to 1978-1983 but now adds the first month of the quarter to the registration year in the Death Registration posted to the “Other” category – continues to not tag the Vital “Death”.
2005-2007 . . . . same information as previously but now correctly tags the Death and Birth in Vitals and does not post anything to the “Other” category.
Meaning for death registrations between 1978 and 2004 we must backtrack to update the Death tag.
I trust someone at FamilySearch can see the inconsistency here in the processing of England & Wales Birth & Death Registration records.
Comments
-
I was originally inclined to disagree with you on the matter, accepting the "FamilySearch line" in previous responses to this issue. However, my main objection to your idea would relate to the possible difference between birth year and the year in which the birth was registered - which admittedly should rarely be more than one year, however.
In which case, why are we allowed to carry over a birth year (and place) from census sources? They are far more likely to be (completely) inaccurate, indeed the detail often varying considerably (for both age & birthplace) from one census to the next.
So, you are probably right - as with your pointing out (again this has been the subject to previous discussions) the inconsistency between the different death registration collections.
Personally, I'm okay with adding all this detail once back on the Person page - for two reasons:
(1) I think the accuracy of the date of birth is better assessed from there - rather than carrying across details at the source linker stage, and
(2) I (perhaps "my loss"!) don't make much use of tagging, in any case.
Whatever the outcome, I agree inconsistency is an important issue here.
0 -
Paul,
You mention . . . ""FamilySearch line" in previous responses to this issue" . . . in the past two years of raising this issue I have not seen a FamilySearch response - other than silence - any chance you know where it is.
In my view the most glaring inconsistancy is that between the death registrations and all birth registrations . . . . where the death registration takes what is labeled the "Registration Year" and uses it as the "Death Year" . . . . . and for similarly constructed birth registrations - does not take the "Registration Year" to be the "Birth Year" . . . . . your note about the registration year being in the birth year+1 does happen occasionally at the end of the year . . . and similarily happens with death registrations - but really, that is really of no consequense compared to other calulations on death and birth dates.
0 -
Sorry, perhaps my expression was not ideal, as it implied a greater involvement of FamilySearch personnel (in the GetSat forum) than has been the case. My particular memory is of (I'm pretty sure) Joe Martel commenting that these were not birth records, but birth registration records, which is why it was considered appropriate to record them in this manner (i.e. detail to "Other" instead of the Birth vital section).
0 -
The idea that these are not Birth Records but Birth Registration Records - if that was indeed what was stated - is a nonsense. What are the Birth Records for England & Wales if not these registrations? There aren't any.
By the way, England & Wales does not, and never has had, a facility to record Delayed Registrations, unlike Canada(?). Yes, some registrations can be late, but that's not quite the same thing.
Having said that, for anyone reading this, there are two howevers...
(1) The collection in question is not Birth Records but not Birth Registration Records either - the collection is an index to the Birth Registration Records (this is a point of pedantry that I'll raise myself just in case someone else does!)
(2) There is, as has been noted here, a possibility that a birth will occur in December but not get registered until January. Most likely to occur with births in the latter parts of December. Of course, the dates in question are only years anyway. However, to treat the date as if it isn't a birth because of the (wild guess) 5% of registrations that are registered in a different year seems odd in the extreme. To stop 5% of records getting errors, we sabotage 95% of the others by not linking the data. Really?
Furthermore, if we're being pedantic over accuracy, why are we indexing births as being in XXX as if it were the town of XXX, when it's actually in the Registration District of XXX, which can be much bigger?
0 -
"why are we allowed to carry over a birth year ... from census sources?"
Well, yes.
0 -
StewartTM, Quite a while back FS changed the way events were tagged. They added a Tag Events section in the lower left of the attachment window in the source linker. If I remember correctly, they initially defaulted to nothing tagged. Some time after that, they set the defaults to tag to all of the vitals that they supported tagging on.
I totally forget that those configurations are there. After confirming all is correct, I add a "Reason to Attach Source" and then go down directly to the Attach button never noticing those settings over to the left.
I don't know if this is related to your issue or not, but I thought that I'd mention it here.
0
