Need a little help with a death,maybe a stillborn?

[Valda]

Hi

With a stillborn twin there would be no time of birth indicated on the living twins' birth certificate. The time of birth is there to show which was the elder or younger of living mutliple births. With only one child born alive that would not be deemed necessary.

With earlier certificates you can sometimes find a time of birth even though it was not a multiple birth.

'If there is a time against the date of birth then there was more than one child born alive at the birth. If however a mother had twins, one liveborn and one stillborn, then the live born twin will not have a time against the birth. Until 1926 there were no registrations at all of a still born child. Having said that, again the early registrations are not consistent. The registrar in the Eton district did not put the times of births of twins in the registers at all until 1845 while the one in Stoke-on-Trent put times against all the registrations up until about 1850.'

http://home.clara.net/dixons/Certificates/births.htm



Regards

Valda

[Pippa64]

Hi,
I'm new here, but have been trying,unsucessfully, to trace details of my stillborn twin.
I saw a mention on an earlier post of full death indexes - is there anywhere I can access these for free? I've searched both the free BMD, birth and death ones, but there is no mention there.
I will be most grateful for any suggestions of where I go from here.

[carol8353]

Hello Pippa and welcome to Rootschat.

Firstly can you tell us what year it was?

So when the people who know about these things, log on later, we'll have a starting point.

Regards

Carol

[nanny jan]

Hi,

I don't think the stillbirth register is online or available for inspection.



http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Registeringlifeevents/Familyhistoryandresearch/Birthmarriageanddeathcertificates/DG_175676



Nanny Jan

[Billyblue]

Hi
By chance I was looking through some old FHS journals yesterday (for something different) and found a reprint of information published by JGSGB (Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain) in 2004.  They make the point that stillbirth means the baby is born dead.  If a baby lives and draws breath after birth, even if it survives only a few minutes, it is not a stillbirth.  So if Heathera's rellie heard one of her twins cry, then it wasn't stillborn.

JGSGB said in 2004, re Stillborn babes - birth & death certificates, UK:
1. Deaths of stillborn babies did not have to be registered until 1874; neither a birth certificate or a death certificate was required.
2. From 1874-1927 for a stillborn child there would be no birth certificate but a death certificate was required.
3. On 1 July 1927, stillbirth registration commenced and a stillbirth would be registered, but no separate death certificate required.
4.In 2004 the current position was that a baby was stillborn if born dead after 24th week of pregnancy. There is no separate birth certificate [which seems to counteract point 3]

In some cemeteries in Australia and presumably in GB, there is a special section for the burial of stillborn babies.
Dawn M.

[Valda]

Hi


In the civil registration system in this country stillborns have never had birth or death certificates. Until 1927 there was no civil registration certificate issued. From that date a stillbirth civil registration certificate was issued.


The Births and Deaths Registration Act, 1926
"still-born" and "still-birth" shall apply to any child which has issued forth from its mother after the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy and which did not at any time after being completely expelled from its mother, breathe or show any other signs of life

This covers ceasarian as well as babies 'born' which is why it is described that way for legal reasons.


The requirement of the Births and Deaths Registration Act, 1874 is not about civil registration death certificates

"A person shall not wilfully bury or procure to be buried the body of any deceased child as if it were still-born.
A person who has control over or ordinarily buries bodies in any burial ground shall not permit to be buried in such burial ground the body of any deceased child as if it were still-born, and shall not permit to be buried or bury in such burial ground any still-born child before there is delivered to him either,-
(a.) A written certificate that such child was not born alive, signed by a registered medical practitioner who was in attendance at the birth or has examined the body of such child ; or
(b.) A declaration signed by some person who would, if the child had been born alive, have been required by this Act to give information concerning the birth, to the effect that no registered medical practitioner was present at the birth, or that his certificate cannot be obtained, and that the child was not born alive ; or
(c.) If there has been an inquest, an order of the coroner.
Any person who acts in contravention of this section shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding ten pounds."

For want of a better descrption the doctor is signing the equivalent of a doctor's certificate to allow the burial to go ahead. The baby's death cannot be registered for a death certificate because in legal terms no birth (as in the 1926 Act) has occurred for a subsequent death certificate to be issued.

Nanny Jane has given the link to the civil registration stillbith register which began in 1927.  This register is not open to the public and never has been. You must apply direct to the General Register Office following the instructions in the link.

Pre 1927 occasionally stillbirths are mentioned in newspapers and in hospital records, particularly lying in hospitals, but really the main evidence is their burials. Civic cemeteries always recorded their burials. Church registers might or might not. As the C20th wore on and especially after the 1926 Act you would expect their burials to appear in all church registers.  Attitudes amongst the clergy and the medical profession were slow to change.


Regards

Valda

[Pippa64]

Thanks for the welcome.
I was born in 1953, so I would have expected to find some sort of record of my twin. I have no information about it as my parents who passed away some years ago would not talk about it, and there are no other family members around who might know.
I think it was a very distressing time for them as my Mom only thought she was having one baby. I was born and then they realised there was another, which was eventually born dead. The hospital said it was stillborn, her GP said the cause of death was delayed delivery.
I think I will probably try and ring the GRO tomorrow and see if they can help.

Pippa

[bagpuss1971]

Hello Pippa,

After I had queried this topic here for my friend, we did find her burial plot just by going to the local bereavement services office,where you can access the burial records in your area.
My friend gave birth in hospital,so it seemed quite easy to trace the burial.
The lady said that there they kept the records of the recent stillborn burials separate,so she looked it up for us,we were given a plot number,there is obviously no marker, but at least my friend knew that her little one had been buried.
I hope you can find the record that you are searching for.

bagpuss 

[Slatedie]

Hi, Pippa, my partner is in your situation, having a stillborn twin.  The administrative situation is that the surviving twin now has the same entitlement to access to the stillbirth record of their twin as the mother has. She knows this because she was the first, nationally, successfully to raise this issue, and was the first to be allowed access to the stillbirth record of her twin.
One related issue is that there is a lovely support group, the Lone Twin Network for surviving twins who lost their twin at any age, and who can share the effect that twin loss has had on them with other like sufferers.
Best regards