Civil registration in England & Wales
There are now several ways to locate births, marriages and deaths post 1837 in England and Wales. The different sources are FreeBMD, Ancestry, FindMyPast and the General Register Office. If you look for this in FamilySearch historical records, it gives you the FindMyPast records. Whereas the first three are based on the old quarterly indexes, the GRO has prepared completely new (or not so new now!) indexes for births and deaths which have significant differences from the other three. I prepared a table to compare these.
I will also add this to our resources page
I should also mention that, if you cannot find an entry you are looking for in one index, it is worth trying the other. I have found the odd discrepancy between the indexes. For example entries in the quarterly index that do not appear in the GRO index and vice versa. How extensive this is I have no clue.
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Thank you for the reference table.
One other thing of GREAT IMPORTANCE that people often overlook in the Civil Registration records. These records are only indicating When the Birth/Marriage/Death was REGISTERED, not the actual B-M-D dates. For example, if a child was born in January, the paperwork may not be completed and submitted until April of the same year. So, the registration is an Index of when records were received, not necessarily when actual B-M-D events took place. Just sayin'.
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I have updated the GRO Index spreadsheet. Latest version is
I have also updated the version on resource page.
This reflects an update to FindMyPast's offering. See
This allows you to search the index in various interesting ways also using the maiden name as one can on the main GRO site. But note that FMP seems to have gaps. The advantages over the GRO website are
- Search using a wider year range.
- Search using a radius around a registration district to catch nearby districts.
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I am in Hampshire, England and very often go first to FreeBMD to find the event, as I may not know exactly when or where, as I had with the death of my gran's first husband. If it's a marriage, then this is a good place for a register index search as GRO only has birth and death indexes online. To get a certificate I always order from GRO using the reference information that I have found. As far as possible I order a PDF rather than a paper certificate. It's easy, quick to be processed and downloaded, and most importantly it's cheaper at only £7.
FreeBMD allows you to select where to search, by county, then by registration district, or select all if unsure.
Hope this is helpful.😊
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Free BMD is good - particularly for marriages. Which site is best depends on what you are looking for and how much information you already have.
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Thank you for providing the spreadsheet.
I had not checked / realised that the FamilySearch records are provided by FMP. What I had noticed is that some of the FS (so presumably FMP) records appear to relate to those found in the local ROs, rather than the GRO ones. These have more recent dates and, from memory (nothing at my fingertips right now) have a different format and detail compared to the GRO records.
Another point to remember is that the FreeBMD marriage records include (batch) all names under a particular reference. So, for example, there can be up to six names (three male, three female) which you often need to "pair off" in order to match who-married-who. An additional problem I often encounter is where one of the names has been indexed incorrectly. So instead of (say) six records against the same reference there will only be five! More often than not the missing person will be the match for the spouse that I have identified!
Funnily enough, I have just highlighted the usefulness of FreeBMD in finding the maiden name of a female - many records indexed by the "CommunityCensus Project" have incorrectly included the husband's name for the wife's surname, instead of establishing her maiden name.
Of course, another problem is where a widow married in the name of her first / previous spouse. An unusual first name helps in these cases, otherwise you will think you have either not found a correct match, or assume (the first husband's) name (in which she married) to be the maiden name.
The GRO index is often useful in establishing the maiden name, since (as your spreadsheet shows) it provides this detail against the child's birth registration entry. Where a maiden name is missing this usually means an illegitimate birth. The maiden name being the same as the child's name can (be not always) mean the child's parents were cousins (with the same family name). More rarely, I have found children of the same parents listed with their mother's "maiden" name being inconsistent - sometimes as the "actual" maiden name, but possibly also recorded as the surname of her former spouse!
In theory, these indexes should make research so "simple", but misunderstandings and human error (especially in indexing and recording variants of surnames) sometimes mean finding spouses and children to be far from straightforward.
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Yes - thanks for the XLS.
The major difference between the new(ish) GRO (England & Wales) Birth Indexes and previous versions is how the indexing treats the birth registration of an illegitimate child where both parents are named on the certificate.
After a certain date (yes, I've forgotten it...) a father's name could only be entered on the birth certificate of an illegitimate child if the father in question turned up at the registration. If he didn't, then only the mother's name could appear (and the child's, of course).
The original GRO (England & Wales) paper indexes (used for FreeBMD, Ancestry, FMP, etc) indexed the illegitimate child with both parents named under both the mother's surname and the father's surname. One certificate, two index entries.
The new(ish) GRO (England & Wales) index indexes the illegitimate child once, under the father's surname only. In effect, it treats it as if the parents were married. (The mother's surname appears in the mother's maiden name item).
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Having trouble finding certain records on GRO. I find the record in Ancestry, in FreeBMD and even in FamilySearch, but no such entry in GRO. I have tried with the reference numbers and everything. I have sent in several correction requests to GRO.
I would like to get the mother's maiden name.
How often is this happening and is there any way yo speed up the correction process? So far, weeks go by and nothing is responded to or corrected.
Anyone having experience with this issue?
Since these records are pre 1912, I would think that sufficient time has gone by to correct missing entries.
Any comment?
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I just checked the list of my reports of errors to the GRO and find the last two items reported - both on 21 January 2023 - are still "Awaiting investigation".
However, even those that have been checked do not always get addressed. For example, I have had "Indexed data not available" and "Indexed data is correct" responses, which I guess I should have queried further, but as they did not involve close relatives I let the matters drop.
I am surprised at the relatively poor quality of some the the GRO indexing. The linked images of the paper indexes that are provided in FreeBMD show the names quite clearly (most are typed, not handwritten), yet they have still been recorded incorrectly.
I find this does work "both ways", however -Having found even earlier dated records on the GRO website, but not on FreeBMD.
Yes, one of my main reasons for making reports is in order to confirm a mother's maiden name on a pre-1912 record and it is annoying when there is a long wait. I would chase-up anything that is still outstanding after around 6/8 weeks, as the department should be fully functioning now (following the pandemic).
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