Certificates - can you really trust them?

[Kennington]

We have only the word of the person registering the event that the infomation on BMD certificates is correct.

But I have found two modern certificates that are wrong. And if we can get it wrong it this day and age of education etc. what hope had our ancestors.

My uncle put his fathers middle name on death certificate as his brothers middle name instead.
My mother in law put her own mothers middle name down which the old lady must have made up ! its not on her birth certificate 

we should try to cross reference as much as possible.
Sorry - I am probably preaching to the converted already, but I wanted to get it off my chest.

Mary

[Nick Carver]

And don't believe the transcription either. I got one with mother's name down as Ruice. I queried it on the grounds that it was a trifle un English to be told that it was correct. Further independent checks revealed it to be the much more believable Prince. Also, when my brother was registering our father's death, he didn't know where he was born! No prizes for guessing the son without any interest in family history.

Perhaps we should stop now? I'm sure 90% of Rootschatters will have had similar experiences.

[Wendi]

Just wanted to say Mary, your mother in law's mother, her middle name may have been a Confirmation Name, which was chosen at the time of Confirmation.  I know this happened particularly in the Catholic Faith.  In my experience it was then used as the name immediately prior to the Surname, if you had more than one Christian name, if not it would be your middle name!

Just a thought
Wendi

[Bee]

It shouldn't be really a surprise that there are mistakes especially on death certificates.

I remember registering my mother's death 6 years ago and the number of questions that I got asked was mind boggling, I found trying to answer some of the questions quite difficult as apart from being very upset, some of them bore no relation to the actual death.

Bee

[Kennington]

I think you've hit the nail on the head there Bee,

I think they were both upset on the day and could't think straight.

Mary

[Flynn]

It's a very interesting point that you raise. Obviously, you can't 100% rely on any information that is provided by people. After all, we're all fallible. Personally, I have found that the least reliable information is contained in Irish death certificates. Especially when you're talking about the beginning of the 20th century, when, according to what I can understand from older people, most children didn't know much about their parents i.e. date of birth, date of marriage (if the parents were even married!) or sometimes who their parents' parents were and where they came from. Some people couldn't tell you much about their fathers as many men had to travel the country to make money for the family. But, having said that, the information that we can gather from bmds can be useful to an extent and sometimes very interesting!

[Kennington]

And another one - my own mother put her step father down on her wedding certificate as her father so as not to upset him !!

family eh ? so unreliable. 

Mary

[Darcy]

My mother's death certificate shows the wrong Christian name. We have no idea how this came about but can only imagine it was a mistake by the Coroner.

We tried to get it changed but it proved to be difficult and we were too upset to persevere.

Darcy

[Flynn]

My favorite is trying to figure out someone's year of birth. In 1901 and 1911 censuses, ages listed aren't anywhere near 10 years difference. Death certificate points to another year altogether and marriage certificate makes out the person is older than they should be! I've been lucky once in locating a birth certificate for one of these people. I just wonder, is it that people don't know how old they are because maybe their math skills weren't great or did they have different unknown reasons for giving differing figures each time they gave information as to their age? Wouldn't it be great if it were possible to find out the stories behind all the "incorrect" information provided on these official records?