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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: coombs on Wednesday 03 January 24 20:58 GMT (UK)
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At the minute you can buy any death registered July 1837 to 1957. And any birth July 1837 to 1922. In time do you think they will make post 1922 births downloadable, or will it be getting too recent, as since several people born in the 1920s and 1930s will still be alive?
I know you can still send off for a birth cert after 1922 by applying and having the cert delivered, I think there are some rules about births less than 50 years old.
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1923 births are now available as digital images. I believe they released these on January 1st 2024 (i.e. after 100 years). I doubt any births more recent will be allowed as digital images, due to privacy concerns.
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I tried to order two birth reg digital downloads for births in 1923 a couple of weeks ago, but only available as paper certs then. Checked again just now, and as Alexander mentioned, they are now available as digital downloads. So looks like a rolling programme to release them at the beginning of the year following what would have been their hundredth birthday.
The two births are of a boy and girl with same surname and same mother's maiden name registered in same district, but in different (consecutive) quarters. I can only find one marriage between those two surnames that would fit.
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What happens when we get to 2034? Will the indexes ever be completed?
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Reading this post...... What country are you looking at?
If you go to familysearch.org they have births in the UK, well my grandson is listed in 1999.
One of my in-laws tried to get her Mothers death cert as she died when she was a baby and was told they don't have it.
I gave her the family search record, she took it to the office, they grunted and said Oh! we will get it.
She waited about an hour and got it.
Ireland are in there up to 1958 I am listed.
If you can't find anything try there.
Maggsie
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The GRO (England and Wales) should have all BMD records from 1st July 1837 (assuming the parents bothered to register the birth) to present date - although there may be a slight delay with the most recent ones reaching them from local RO's.
The question was about the new feature of digital downloads. My birth record (1950s) is available there but NOT yet as a digital download, only as a full paper certificate
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GRO have stated that births, more than a hundred years old, will be available as digital images so I would expect an extra year to be made available each January as as already happened this year. Hopefully by the time they get to 1934, additional funding will have been found to digitise further records, but who knows.
This 100 year restriction is purely an internal GRO policy and has no basis in law - nor do the additional requests for information you are required to give when trying to order " recent" entries on-line- such as births within the last 50 years.
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In Ireland. GRO records involving personal data are closed for the lifetime of individuals which is assumed to be 100 years. There also are GDPR regulations (e.g. Elector registers have been taken down from online). The 100 year rule also applies to the Census. There is a basis in law for this, it is not arbitrary.
Familysearch has done its own thing, transcribing GRO records over recent decades.
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The question was about the new feature of digital downloads. My birth record (1950s) is available there but NOT yet as a digital download, only as a full paper certificate
Thank you LizzieL for clarifying the context of my remark and thank you Anthony for clarifying the law in England and Wales.
Now I AM going off topic. The inertia about completing the indexes has lasted so long that it seems it is no longer on anyone's to-do list. The original work was contracted out, not actually completed, and has numerous errors and omissions. If it were ever thought to be a worthwhile piece of work, it really should be part of the GRO's mainstream task until finished. Is it proper in 2024 that anyone should be expected to work with, for example, all the original marriage indexes? (Who married whom? - up to 1911, followed by poor quality originals which throw up many queries in FreeBMD.)
I know government departments are not allowed to make a profit, but if they were to increase the prices by a small amount for some or all types of certificate to finance this gradually, would that be a profit? Proper indexes to facilitate supply of certificates seems like mainstream business to me.
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In Ireland. GRO records involving personal data are closed for the lifetime of individuals which is assumed to be 100 years. There also are GDPR regulations (e.g. Elector registers have been taken down from online). The 100 year rule also applies to the Census. There is a basis in law for this, it is not arbitrary.
Familysearch has done its own thing, transcribing GRO records over recent decades.
We are lucky in the UK that access to birth/marriage/death records is granted by statute, and so not subject to GDPR/Data Protection legislation ...... if that were to change doing research within the last 100 years would become a lot more difficult !
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Thanks all for your replies. So now 1923 is available, so I guess in January 2025 they will release digital downloads of 1924 births. My great uncle was born September 1923 but I obtained a copy 20 years ago from the local Durham BMD search but it was a typed copy when I got the cert.
My uncle was born in September 1944 so if I wanted to obtain his birth cert, I would have to send off for it the usual channels, as it will likely be 20 years before it will be available as a digital download.
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maggsie familysearch have records but they dont have images and most dont have full details
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In Ireland. GRO records involving personal data are closed for the lifetime of individuals which is assumed to be 100 years. There also are GDPR regulations (e.g. Elector registers have been taken down from online). The 100 year rule also applies to the Census. There is a basis in law for this, it is not arbitrary.
Familysearch has done its own thing, transcribing GRO records over recent decades.
We are lucky in the UK that access to birth/marriage/death records is granted by statute, and so not subject to GDPR/Data Protection legislation ...... if that were to change doing research within the last 100 years would become a lot more difficult !
Not quite, although current English restrictions don’t concern genealogists. There was a 100-year rule which was shortened to 30yrs by the the Public Records Act 1967 which in turn was replaced by the Freedom of Information Act 2000, lowering the limit to the current 20 years. Some records deemed ‘sensitive’ remain inaccessible and have higher limits. I don’t know what prevails in N. Irl and Scotland, but GDPR in the UK is almost identical to that in the EU, having been ‘lifted’ and shoved into your 2018 Data Protection Act. In Ireland its 100/75/25 yrs for BMDs but there are some work-arounds.
It's also worth remembering that a birth in 1923 and registered in 1924 won't appear until next year.
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Under the 100 year rule, the GRO in Northern Ireland extends internet access to births dynamically (ie. continuously in real time, rather than an annual exercise to upload a year of new records). For example, I was just looking at the birth for someone born on 2 January 1924.
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Many births that took place in late 1923 were registered in Jan or Feb 1924 due to the 6 week time frame allowed, and even then some births were registered later than that. About a year ago I looked up the GRO birth record on FreeREG for famous gangster Frankie Fraser born 13 Dec 1923, it appears in the Jan, Feb, Mar quarter of 1924 so his birth was probably registered in January 1924, or maybe February.
A pal born 18 Dec 1944 once showed me his birth cert, it was registered I think 27th or 28th Dec 1944. If it had been registered on 1 Jan 1945 it would appear in the quarter ending March 1945.
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As you point out - births (and deaths) are always indexed by the date of registration - the date of the event itself is irrelevant, so they can sometimes appear indexed in a different quarter and that is the date that will cover their release date under the current GRO policy.
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In Ireland. GRO records involving personal data are closed for the lifetime of individuals which is assumed to be 100 years. There also are GDPR regulations (e.g. Elector registers have been taken down from online). The 100 year rule also applies to the Census. There is a basis in law for this, it is not arbitrary.
Familysearch has done its own thing, transcribing GRO records over recent decades.
Indexes for Irish BMD's up to 1958 are on Ancestry and Familysearch. Don't know if they're also on Find My Past.
The actual certificates are available to view, free, for births over 100 years ago, marriages over 75 years ago, and deaths over 50 years ago. Available on irishgenealogy.ie
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The actual certificates are available to view, free, for births over 100 years ago, marriages over 75 years ago, and deaths over 50 years ago. Available on irishgenealogy.ie
See https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/news/154-update-to-the-civil-records-3
(Note they didn't bother changing the year date to 2023)
Birth register records – 1864 to 1922, Marriage register records – 1845 to 1947 & Death register records – 1871* to 1972.
BMD's for the six Ulster Counties (NI) up to the end of 1921.
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The Irish 1923 birth records aren't available yet, it usually takes a couple of months past the new year before the next batch are released.
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I think Australian birth records are also unattainable for 100 years, but marriages can be attainable after 50 years and deaths 30 years depending on territory.
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GRO did issue an invitation to tender to companies wanting to bid for record scanning and transcription services last year ( a 5 year partnership with a contract value of £38m), so hopefully we will see more records available at some point soon.. maybe even some marriages !
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That is very good news!