Slightly off topic, but does anyone know, when a Certified Copy is received, and the details are hand written, is it just a copy of the Register entry? I'm wondering because the handwriting all looks so similar, yet when the Register is signed surely there should be a difference in the style of the signatures?
giraffe
No, you're bang on topic here.
AsI understand it, the only certificates we can purchase in/from England & Wales are legally required to be a certified copy, that's why no email versions are available (like an Irish research cert, for instance, which is just a photocopy of the register entry).
Depending on where you get it from (and sometimes, I think the condition of the original entry) this can/will be a typed or hand-written transcription of the entry in the register. When I apply to the local registrar, more often than not, for a marriage entry, I get a photocopy of the original entry that has been scanned onto a modern certificate form and then, like the transcribed copies, it is certified (as a true copy of the entry in the register).
The central registers are only a copy of these original registers so the transcription maybe the third copy made.
The transcriptions may have errors at each stage, as may the original register, so none can be guaranteed to be error free. I presume that there is some sort of cross-check to the certification process but I could be wrong.
