Can we believe anything we read on BMD certificates

[BunkersHill]

... but has any of us EVER seen a birth certificate where the mother is a married woman and the father's name appearing on the certificate is anyone other than her husband??

As a matter of fact yes. Despite my three score years plus something I have just become involved in family history, and one of the first things I discovered was that a child I grew up with for 15 years is the son of my adoptive mother and a man of whom I know nothing other than his name. My adoptive mother was married however to my adoptive father at the time of the birth. The birth certificate shows my adoptive mother's maiden name and the stranger as the father, yet the subject of the certificate goes by the name of my adoptive father. Very messy.

[Milliepede]

Long story but I obtained a marriage certificate where the groom made up a father by combining the first name of his real father with the surname of his unmarried mother.

The occupation engine driver was correct and it eventually led me to find the real father which I was delighted about.

[Guy Etchells]

This thread is an example of why I keep banging on about family history researchers needing to understand why records were produced and what they record.

Historic birth records recorded only what the registrar was told. No proof for anything was required.
Worse still if they were acquired from the GRO they are only transcripts of what the registrar recorded and may contain errors and/or omissions.

Cheers
Guy

[LouisaS]

My Gt Grandfather registered 4 out of 5 children, the mother registered my  grandfathers, made a complete mess of it, even her maiden name was totally different.  Cambridge assured me they were all the same Mother and Father, why did she do it?

[BunkersHill]

This thread is an example of why I keep banging on about family history researchers needing to understand why records were produced and what they record.

Historic birth records recorded only what the registrar was told. No proof for anything was required.
Worse still if they were acquired from the GRO they are only transcripts of what the registrar recorded and may contain errors and/or omissions.

Nice post Guy, and I agree entirely. People are prone to fibbing, and though it might be difficult to get at, yet the truth has a nasty habit of never entirely going away.

Please may I ask your opinion of birth registry accuracy? Perhaps records dating from certain periods and locations are more accurate than others? I know it is awfully general, but can you give an idea of reliability? This is after all just data that can be analyzed to obtain a figure of probability. Perhaps someone has done statistical analysis on the accuracy of birth registration data.

Are there accounts of Registrars being disciplined for cooking the books for want of a better expression?

[Guy Etchells]

Please may I ask your opinion of birth registry accuracy? Perhaps records dating from certain periods and locations are more accurate than others? I know it is awfully general, but can you give an idea of reliability? This is after all just data that can be analyzed to obtain a figure of probability. Perhaps someone has done statistical analysis on the accuracy of birth registration data.

Are there accounts of Registrars being disciplined for cooking the books for want of a better expression?

Michael Whitfield Foster wrote two excellent books "A Comedy of Errors" and "A Comedy of Errors, Act 2".
on registration or more specifically the GRO.
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mikefost/
I am annoyed my copies are at present at my house in Scotland so I can't check to see if he quantified birth registers as he did for marriage registers in book one, though I think he targetted the GRO indexes rather than the registers in book two.

There are accounts of Registrars being disciplined as there are for Rectors being fined for not forwarding marriages to the Superintendent Registrars, but I don't have any at hand at present.
Cheers
Guy

[jorose]

1886:
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18860405-459&div=t18860405-459
John Broome, registrar at Upper Holloway, was charged with falsifying entries.

He seems to have made up some additional births in order to get more pay.  The false entries mentioned are still on freebmd! eg. "the Brace twins", supposedly born "August last" (e.g. 1885) and registered in September:
Harry Lorne Brace & Sarah
(would be interesting to know if there's any notes on the certificates if you actually ordered them).

Of course, he was inventing children who didn't exist... makes it a bit easier to notice.

[pinefamily]

BMD's are just a historical event. Can we really trust any written history. No, not really. History is just a record based on knowlege of that time, which is just based on opinions of memory.

Regards

Malky

This is an interesting concept. How do we as researchers trust any information as correct?
Point in case: my grandmother was known as Ada May Lindquist, and that is the name I found on my grandparents' marriage certificate when I bought it. Knowing her parents' names from older relatives, I thought perhaps she was one of those not registered, as I couldn't find a birth record. When the BDMs were indexed by our local family history society here in South Australia, imagine my surprise and confusion when I found her registered under her mother's first husband's name of Dedman. Thoughts of wrong names entered my head, as well as the idea she perhaps had taken the Lindquist name, although three older sisters didn't.
Talking to older relatives who remembered the sisters, I discovered that she was in fact the eldest of the Lindquist girls, and had been registered under the Dedman name to hide the shame of the husband deserting the family.
Moral of the story? Where would my research have taken me if it had been out of living memory?

[Nanna52]

My grandfather was the youngest of eleven born between 1853 and 1878.  On birth certificates and death certificates of children my great grandmothers surname was Heale, Hale, Hales, Anst and Aust.  Caused great problems until I found that her sister joined her out here and she had married an Aust.  I believe Heale is the correct name, but back in England many of her siblings changed it to Hale.