Registration errors

[siptree]

Can anyone tell me what would happen if a birth was registered and the parents noticed after leaving the registration office, that a mistake had been made. I assume a new certificate would have to be issued, but would the original be cancelled. I have a child in a family who has a different mother's maiden name to the rest of the family. Other details, such as d.o.b, mother's christian name, address and fathers name are all as expected. This must be an error, and it is hard to believe it was never noticed at all. I am pretty sure these parents were not illiterate, the birth was in 1910.

Thanks

[Valda]

Hi

The certificate is amended.

An Act for registering Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England [17th August 1836.]

'XLIV. Provided always, and be it enacted, That no Person charged with the Duty of registering any Birth, Death, or Marriage who shall discover any Error to have been committed in the Form or Substance of any such Entry, shall be therefore liable to any of the Penalties aforesaid if within One Calendar Month next after the Discovery of such Error, in the Presence of the Parents of the Child whose Birth may have been so registered, or of the Parties married, or of Two Persons attending upon any Person in his or her last Illness whose Death may have been so registered, or in the case of the Death or Absence of the respective Parties aforesaid, then in the Presence of the Superintendent Registrar and of Two other credible Witnesses who shall respectively attest the same, he shall correct the erroneous Entry, according to the Truth of the Case, by Entry in the Margin, without any Alteration of the original Entry, and shall sign the marginal Entry, and add thereunto the Day of the Month and Year when such Correction shall be made : Provided also, that in the Case of a Marriage Register he shall make the like marginal Entry, attested in like Manner in the Duplicate Marriage Register Book to be made by him as aforesaid, and in every Case shall make the like Alteration in the certified Copy of the Register Book to be made by him as aforesaid, or in case such certified Copy shall have been already made, provided he shall make and deliver in like Manner a separate certified Copy of the original erroneous Entry, and of the marginal Correction therein made.'

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~framland/acts/1836Act.htm



Regards

Valda

[les_looking]

are you sure the "extra" maiden name is not connected in some way?
i have seen various certificates where a first marriage has been used or the mother of the child has given
HER mothers name or similar, as many will tell you just because its an official certificate don't take it all for gospel

or if you or someone knows it IS a mistake maybe nobody properly ever checked it, but the name must have come from somewhere? unless the registrar had a brainstorm and gave her own Mums name lol

[DudleyWinchurch]

One of my Irish birth records is just like that. 

Dad's name and occupation agree,  Mom's first name is correct and the address is very close to the two different addresses where they lived a few years before and after.  It was the only plausible looking birth record in the area and time-span but a completely different mother's maiden name.

I assumed that it must have been in response to one of two possible questions.  Either: What was your name before you married? and there had been an earlier marriage that I don't yet know of, or Mother's maiden name? and she gave her mother's.  Either way I'm hoping that it will help me get further back with this family.

[added: as for not noticing, I once said to my sister that I can't believe that my Dad never told me that the name we gave to my youngest child was his grandfather's name.  She looked at me and said, that was number five and it was Christmas, if he had told you, do you really think that you would have remembered?]

[siptree]

Thanks to all for replies.  The mother is unlikely to have been married before as she was only 19 when married to this child's father. The child in question is the fourth child of the family and all the others have the 'correct' maiden name. The 'alien' name is definitely not the maiden name of either of the child's grandmothers. I can't find any connection at all and there are only 2 instances of this name in the area at the right time and they do not fit at all.

All in al, l I think the best explanation is some sort of brainstorm by the registrar! Maybe there was a queue and he heard a name someone else was giving, a bit of a stretch I admit. The child in question is not my direct ancestor, but a great uncle. It's so hard to imagine no one noticing a mistake like that, or not bothering to correct it. In an earlier period where people were illiterate etc. and rarely needed to consult officialdom it would have been easier to accept it slipping through the net. I have seen plenty of mistakes of all kinds on official documents before, which is why I am so certain this is an error.

[Mean_genie]

Interesting one - a couple of possibilities are:

If the certificate came from the GRO and not the local register office, then it may have been a copying mistake when the registrar sent his or her quarterly returns to Somerset House.

Even if was s registrar's mistake at the time of registration, the parents could easily have failed to notice the mistake while they were in the register office, and may never have had a full copy of the certificate. Many people simply had a Certificate of Registry of Birth (often incorrectly called a short birth certificate) which only does not show the parents' names, only  the child's. These were perfectly adequate for most purposes, and there are still plenty of the around.

Does this help?

Mean_genie

[siptree]

The certificate is the GRO one. But I had forgotten the old 'short cert' and that maybe why it was never picked up. Because this birth is relatively recent, there are plenty of checks, other than official ones, even photographs that identify the child's parents as being the 'correct' ones.

So, thanks for that, it would offer a reasonable answer to the question of 'Why didn't they notice!!'

[les_looking]

the short birth certificate was only introduced in the mid' 1940's i think
and was first used mostly to save some embarrassment for illegitimate children, so that couldn't have been the problem,
the registrar miscopying is a possible, as i say if that name is of no significance in your family not sure you will ever know the real reason

[danuslave]

the short birth certificate was only introduced in the mid' 1940's i think

Hi Les

Unless you are talking about something different, I think you are a few years out!  I have a Certificate of Registry of Birth for December 1903.  At the top it says Births and Deaths Registration Act 1874

It's a wonder so many of these survive as they are very flimsy.

Linda