Family History - BMD's (Births, Marriages, and Deaths Index).

From 1837 (1855 in Scotland) every birth, marriage, and death has had to be recorded with the civil authorities. These records were sent off to the authorities by every parish each quarter.

Copies - known as Bishop's Transcripts - were also sent to the Bishop of the diocese.

These records were once held at Somerset House in London, but are now held at the General Register Office (St Catherine's House) in Stockport.

They cannot be viewed by the public, but are available on microfiche in most archives. When an entry relevant to the searcher is found it is identifiable by a reference number similar to "June quarter 1891 - 11c 875". The 11c is the volume number and identifies the location, and the 875 is the page number. The June quarter means that the event happened in either April, May or June.

Using that reference, a relevant certificate may be obtained from the GRO (General Registry Office) in Stockport. This may be done online : click here.

  n.b. these reference numbers are of no use to the registrar in whose district the event was actually recorded. Please keep in mind though, if you know the date and the registration district of an event, you will save some money by applying directly to the local registrar for any certificates.

 A group known as Freebmd have almost completely transcribed the years from 1837 to about 1951 (up to now - Nov 2010) indexing over 192 million records. These are available online free of charge : click here.

There is another website that has a searchable index, which is the official site, but this is pay per view. In addition, the index is complete. The site is named Find My Past: click here.

There are many partial bmd's that have been transcribed by a countless number of people. See the 'Websites' page for more details.

 

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