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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: meekhcs on Wednesday 16 July 25 00:12 BST (UK)

Title: GRO Death registration
Post by: meekhcs on Wednesday 16 July 25 00:12 BST (UK)
Please can anyone tell me why a death would have been registered twice with the GRO? I have a death in 1985 that has been registered twice, with consecutive numbering.
Thank you
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: rosie99 on Wednesday 16 July 25 06:34 BST (UK)
Could this just be an error on the website you are using or are you viewing the original register
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: carol8353 on Wednesday 16 July 25 07:05 BST (UK)
A friend of mine gave the wrong DOB when his mother died.
He had to go back a few days later and amend it.
She now has 2 death registrations (this was in 2017)
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: AntonyMMM on Wednesday 16 July 25 10:05 BST (UK)
A friend of mine gave the wrong DOB when his mother died.
He had to go back a few days later and amend it.
She now has 2 death registrations (this was in 2017)

That should have been a quite simple correction - not another registration ?
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: AntonyMMM on Wednesday 16 July 25 10:07 BST (UK)
Please can anyone tell me why a death would have been registered twice with the GRO? I have a death in 1985 that has been registered twice, with consecutive numbering.
Thank you

It may be an indexing issue, but without details it is impossible to say. There are very few reasons why a death would need to be registered again ( i.e. a re-registration).
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: PaulineJ on Wednesday 16 July 25 10:48 BST (UK)
Please can anyone tell me why a death would have been registered twice with the GRO? I have a death in 1985 that has been registered twice, with consecutive numbering.
Thank you

Is it the same man/woman? a common enough surname? It's not so very unusual to have two namesakes with the same birthday. a stretch to registering in the same year and qtr isn't beyond impossible.

Pauline
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: Jon_ni on Wednesday 16 July 25 12:49 BST (UK)
a death in 1985 that has been registered twice,
Quote
with consecutive numbering.

A death index entry in 1985 will have the person's DOB and the Month of registration plus the usual volume and page references & District.
Each page had up to ten entries (if click on the page numbers on FreeBMD) entered chronologically by date/time of registration.
By consecutive numbering do you mean consecutive Pages in the same District or do you have the actual certificates showing the entry number??
The name of the person and District etc would assist.

Edit: From 1984, the indexes are in annual instead of quarterly volumes but include the month of registration. image added
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: meekhcs on Wednesday 16 July 25 13:52 BST (UK)
Thank you everyone for your replies.
I am attaching the search page from GRO
I have a copy of the death cert ordered under the page 1584 ref. which I actually took from FindMyPast

 
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: rosie99 on Wednesday 16 July 25 13:54 BST (UK)
Freebmd
Deaths 1985 
TWIGG    GEORGE    5MR1929    CAMDEN    14   1583    
TWIGG    GEORGE    5MR1929    CAMDEN    14   1584   

ADDED The image that this information was taken from is available to view and does give both entries
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: AntonyMMM on Wednesday 16 July 25 14:07 BST (UK)
If you have a cert from the p1584 reference and there is nothing on it to indicate anything out of the ordinary then you would have to order another cert using the p1583 reference and see what arrives.

My guess would be that it is either an indexing error by GRO, or possibly that the entry was mistakenly submitted twice by the registration office during the quarterly returns process.

No way of knowing just from the index.
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: meekhcs on Wednesday 16 July 25 14:23 BST (UK)
As jon_ni suggested I looked at pages 1583 and 1584 on Free BMD and the entries were recorded as shown on attached pages.

I have asked GRO for an explanation and am still waiting for a reply. I am reluctant to payout for a second certificate if this is just an admin error.
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: meekhcs on Wednesday 16 July 25 14:25 BST (UK)
and P 1583
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: meekhcs on Wednesday 16 July 25 14:27 BST (UK)
Looking at the pages more closely it seems 3 entries have been "doubled up". Hmmmm
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: Jon_ni on Wednesday 16 July 25 18:53 BST (UK)
strange indeed, I have seen a birth registered by a midwife then subsequently by the mother herself a week or two later but that was 80-100 years before this. 2 children/people might have seperately registered the death on the different pages.
As Rosie says just the 2 entries on the 1985 computer printout/image on pages 1583 & 1584 https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?scan=1&r=276264998:7380&d=bmd_1750653180

If look at the other names Sharp, Desmond is indexed twice (on the image as well as the FreeBMD transcript) and as Marshall, Desmond on page 1583 hence 12 entries (2 too many).

Page 1584 has 11 entries because Walker, John is indexed under his forname and his title of Lord, as a finding aid to the single entry.
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: meekhcs on Wednesday 16 July 25 19:10 BST (UK)
Thanks everyone. It will be interesting to see what GRO have to say.
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: jonwarrn on Wednesday 16 July 25 19:54 BST (UK)
Looking at the pages more closely it seems 3 entries have been "doubled up".

The Camden entries on those two pages are all doubled up one way or another
Thomas Honeyfield is on 1582 and 1583
Desmond Marshall on 1582 and 1583
Frederick Thomas Litchfield on 1584 and 1585
Deborah Mary White on 1584 and 1585

There are some others.
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: meekhcs on Wednesday 16 July 25 20:05 BST (UK)
It will be interesting to hear what the GRO have to say, especially as they are showing THREE entries on their website,
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: rosie99 on Wednesday 16 July 25 22:13 BST (UK)
It will be interesting to hear what the GRO have to say, especially as they are showing THREE entries on their website,


GRO has 3 entries one of which has been duplicated.  It is not unknown for them to have duplicate entries on the site, I have seen them before. As John has mentioned there are other entries in Camden reg district with two different numbers. 

Let us know what the GRO say when you get an answer
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: Jon_ni on Thursday 17 July 25 02:00 BST (UK)
One wonders about the technology used in 1985 to make & transmit the copies from Camden to GRO HQ then at St Catherine's House, Kingsway, London. Presumably moved on from Victorian clerical copying to photocopies of the Camden entries posted or perhaps 'faxed'.
On receipt then the pages bundled into the correct Volumes, numbered at top, and names entered on a computer of the era to produce the alphabetical index (the indexes are computerised from 1984 onwards). Was the 1990's before computerisation of records at local Registrar's level started and not linked nationwide till 2007.
The original bound ledgers are still in Camden https://www.camden.gov.uk/get-a-copy-of-a-certificate
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: AntonyMMM on Thursday 17 July 25 10:06 BST (UK)
I believe there was a period in the 1980s when returns were sent to GRO by photocopying the local entries. How GRO managed them in their system I have no idea. Each entry would be an A4 copy so the old system of having a number (10) of entries per page would no longer apply, but GRO carried on using page numbers, at least for a while.

It does mean that for this period you may actually get a copy of the original record when ordering a certificate from GRO - something that doesn't apply at any other time.

The duplicates in the indexes are usually explained by names being recorded on register entries as "X otherwise (or formerly known as) Y", something registrars are encouraged to do. The entry then appears in the index under each name variation.

My own mother's death, in 2022, appears 3 times in the GRO index for that reason.

Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: Jon_ni on Thursday 17 July 25 11:44 BST (UK)
Quote
The duplicates in the indexes are usually explained by names being recorded on register entries as "X otherwise (or formerly known as) Y", something registrars are encouraged to do. The entry then appears in the index under each name variation.

As seen in the FreeBMD snip (accurately from the GRO printout images) by Sharp, Desmond also being indexed as Marshall, Desmond on page 1583, and by Lord John Walker + John Walker, but can't think why Sharp, Desmond appears twice.

Good point about the 10 entries if photocopied, how many births on an local full ledger page? was it 5? Know was 2 for marriages (from the bound parish ones online) vs 4 on the loose leaf quarterly copies the parish returned to the GRO.

Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: AntonyMMM on Thursday 17 July 25 11:51 BST (UK)

Good point about the 10 entries if photocopied, how many births on an local full ledger page? was it 5? Know was 2 for marriages (from the bound parish ones online) vs 4 on the loose leaf quarterly copies the parish returned to the GRO.

Once the format went to portrait for births & deaths, each entry became a single page and they are kept in a binder - so one entry per page.
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: KGarrad on Thursday 17 July 25 14:10 BST (UK)
By a strange coincidence, I was recently looking at a 1987 marriage.
The image link, from FreeBMD shows an A4 page of a computer printout.
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: Jon_ni on Thursday 17 July 25 15:25 BST (UK)
Quote
The image link, from FreeBMD shows an A4 page of a computer printout.

Just looked at an 1987 one. May be a computer printout but not A4, closer to A3,  likely continuous form paper/tractor-feed paper for a dot matrix printer.
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: KGarrad on Thursday 17 July 25 16:28 BST (UK)
Quote
The image link, from FreeBMD shows an A4 page of a computer printout.

Just looked at an 1987 one. May be a computer printout but not A4, closer to A3,  likely continuous form paper/tractor-feed paper for a dot matrix printer.

A4 and A3 have the same ratios of width to height - A4 is exactly half of an A3!
The A series of paper sizes has a ration of 1.414:1. The square root of 2 ;)

Fanfold paper, for dot matrix printers was commonly 9.5 by 11 inches.
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: Jon_ni on Thursday 17 July 25 17:05 BST (UK)
14-7/8" x 11" was more like what I was thinking of from old parts/stores lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Continuous_form_paper_(14p875_x_11).jpg
Title: Re: GRO Death registration
Post by: meekhcs on Sunday 20 July 25 01:01 BST (UK)
Just to let everyone know I am still waiting for a reply to my query from the GRO.

Incidentally the Copy death cert I received appears to be a photocopy of the original detail with the actual signature of the informant.