errors on trees

[sallyyorks]

Thanks for the explanation Guy.
 
After I had been researching for a while I also had problems with some local registrars offices refusing to supply certificates for family history purposes. This would have been around 2000/1. It wasn't across the board so I can only presume some were making up their own rules. It was mainly those is cities and large towns, the rural ones remained obliging 

Yes, many Registrars are unaware that civil registration was principally set up because the poor registration occurring in the earlier ecclesiastical system of registration of baptisms, marriages and burials undermined property rights, by making it difficult to establish lines of descent.
That added to the complaints of Nonconformists, led to the establishment of a Select Committee on Parochial Registration in 1833.
That in turn, established the modern system of civil registration, and set up the General Register Office to administer it.

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1833/mar/28/parochial-registration

I am amazed at the number of genealogists, professionals included, that do not realise that family history is one of the corner stones of the establishment of both the Ecclesiastical system for registering baptisms, marriages and burials and the civil system for registering births, marriages and deaths.
Unfortunately this ignorance of their rights makes it easier for the few rogue registrars to refuse to supply certificates that is their legal duty to supply.

I challenged Karen Dunnell, the Registrar General back in 2007 on that very subject, with a result she sent an instruction to all Registrars and Superintendent Registrars reminding them that it was their legal duty to supply certificates to genealogists.

Cheers
Guy

The introduction of Civil Registration wasn't really anything to do with "property rights" or, as another poster has pointed out, family researchers finding "lines of descent". The vast majority of people back then owned no property anyway.

Civil Registration was brought in (1837) in relation to the new Poor Laws (1834) and also the building of the large new, deeply unpopular, Union Workhouses
The new Poor Laws were largely introduced due to the ongoing mass migration of labourers moving from the countryside into the growing industrial towns and cities. The old poor laws had become wholly inadequate. Civil Registration then made it easier to decide which workhouse a particular person might be placed in or where they should get poor relief. It also made it easier for the authorities to prosecute in cases of infanticide. The crime was named The Concealment of Birth, in other words the failure to register a birth .

[Guy Etchells]

Sorry Sallyyorks but that is incorrect.

If you look at the debates on Hansard on the bills that produced the 1836 registration Acts you will see that one of the major concerns was tracing lineage to prove hereditary rights another was that the ecclesiastical registers excluded Dissenters from being registered.
This lead to a problem of not being able to prove their rightsof hereditary

This can be shown in an earlier debate about parochial Registration, on of many which lead up to civil registration. -

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01eq8/
“Mr. Wilks rose to move for the appointment of a "Select Committee to consider the general state of parochial registries, and the registration of births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials, in England and Wales…

…Often, too, it happened that two or three children of the same family were contemporaneously baptized; and he had before him a document in which three children were so baptized, and the name of the youngest was first entered in the baptismal registry, while the eldest daughter was entered last, though the youngest was an infant, and she was ten years old. In consequence of such errors, 1217 if the baptismal registry were an evidence of age, the youngest child might claim a fortune of which the eldest might be hopelessly deprived. The House must be sensible that the system of registering baptisms must be imperfect; and that there ought to be a national registry of births.”

As we get into the direct debates on civil registration the discussion concentrates on hereditary issues. -

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01eq5/

“REGISTER OF BIRTHS.
HC Deb 02 July 1834 vol 24 cc1073-80
The Attorney General said, that a Registration of Births of Dissenters was necessary even to Churchmen and to all persons who had or who might be left property. Without a proper and legal registry of births, marriages, and deaths it would be in many cases, and in cases where members of the establishment, and of every sect might be concerned, very difficult to decide in a Court of Law to whom property belonged. In the course of his practice he had seen in Courts of Law forgeries and many other expedients resorted to to obtain property, all of which would have been prevented if there had existed a full registry of births, marriages, and deaths.

…Mr. Brougham said, that the Bill was intended not only for the relief of Dissenters, but of the whole community. When he introduced it, he stated that it was not meant to interfere with the registries kept in churches, or the fees consequent upon those registries payable to the clergy. This was apparent in the first clause. There was no intention whatever to disturb the existing law relating to the registration of baptisms and burials: on the contrary, the Act of the 52nd of Geo. 3rd, under which such registries were kept, would remain in operation. At present there was no record of births and deaths, and the great object of this Bill was, to supply that defect, which was severely felt in cases of title and other cases involving property. He thought that such a record would be a great benefit to the community at large, and therefore he hoped the Committee would agree to the clause.”
to be continued

[Guy Etchells]

continuation

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01eq6/

REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS, &c.
HC Deb 15 April 1836 vol 32 cc1087-92
The Attorney General felt that the measure would be not merely a benefit to the Dissenters, but would be found to be equally a benefit to the members of the Church of England. With respect to registration at present, as selected to the members of the Church of England, it was exceedingly imperfect. There was no registration of deaths—they merely had a registration of burials. It was impossible, on this account, to find evidence of descent with any certainty beyond two generations, and the consequence was, that this uncertainty led to great litigation and expense.

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01eq7/

REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS.
HL Deb 11 July 1836 vol 35 cc79-89

Viscount Melbourne …This was a measure which their Lordships would at once perceive, as a matter of general policy, as a matter of general convenience, as a matter of general interest, was in the highest degree desirable, independent of any question relating either to Dissenters or to the Established Church. No one of their Lordships conversant with the business of life, or engaged in its transactions, could have failed to experience at some time or other the difficulty of ascertaining some facts of importance to his property and his family. Those who were conversant with the administration of justice and the nature of the cases which were brought forward for legal adjudication were well acquainted with the imperfections of the system of registration adopted in this country, and the great inconveniences which had arisen from the impossibility of ascertaining facts of great and vital importance. At present nobody could tell what period might have elapsed between the birth of a child and the date of its baptism; nobody could tell how many children were not baptised at all.

I could go on and on giving quotes from the debates leading up to the passing of the two Acts that founded civil registration The Act for registering Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England [17th August 1836.] and the Act for Marriages in England [17th August 1836.].

Nowhere in the debates is there a mention of overcrowding of the workhouses or discussion of the poor law.
The debates are purely concerned with the inadequacy of the existing legislation that recorded baptisms and burials rather than births and deaths.
Cheers
Guy

[sallyyorks]

Guy Etchells
So you are saying Civil Registration was only brought in for the benefit of a tiny proportion (the owners of property) of the population ? That this was the only reason?

[Guy Etchells]

No if you look at how I started that post I wrote

"If you look at the debates on Hansard on the bills that produced the 1836 registration Acts you will see that one of the major concerns was tracing lineage to prove hereditary rights another was that the ecclesiastical registers excluded Dissenters from being registered."

There were other considerations but those two were the main considerations.

Don't take my word for it look up the debates in Hansard the parliamentary archive.

Cheers
Guy

[sallyyorks]

No if you look at how I started that post I wrote

"If you look at the debates on Hansard on the bills that produced the 1836 registration Acts you will see that one of the major concerns was tracing lineage to prove hereditary rights another was that the ecclesiastical registers excluded Dissenters from being registered."

There were other considerations but those two were the main considerations.

Don't take my word for it look up the debates in Hansard the parliamentary archive.

Cheers
Guy

It is not that I doubt your sources or what was said and recorded during these debates.
It is that this is Lord Melbourne and the 1830's. Reactionary, repressive and opposed to reforms, Whig or Tory.

Statistics, like the first modern census 1841 or civil registration, were becoming popular for government. I cannot help wonder at the motivation behind gathering them. It was a time of great social upheaval, serious unrest but of still keeping the rabble in its place. CR was convenient for enforcing the hated new poor laws ?, enforcement still ongoing in 1837

[Guy Etchells]

It is not that I doubt your sources or what was said and recorded during these debates.
It is that this is Lord Melbourne and the 1830's. Reactionary, repressive and opposed to reforms, Whig or Tory.

Statistics, like the first modern census 1841 or civil registration, were becoming popular for government. I cannot help wonder at the motivation behind gathering them. It was a time of great social upheaval, serious unrest but of still keeping the rabble in its place. CR was convenient for enforcing the hated new poor laws ?, enforcement still ongoing in 1837

Sorry I don't understand you point.
The first modern census was surely in 1801 with the poor law unions being put in place in 1834 these unions were used as a basis for civil registration districts rather than civil registration districts being used as poor law unions.

Or are you suggesting that parliament was following suggestions of Thomas R. Malthus and his Essay on Population in an attempt to restrict population growth?

Cheers
Guy

[msr]

Please may I interject here.  A fascinating history lesson going on but straying quite extensively from the title of the thread. 
Not that it is for me to stop you, but when I receive notification of an update I hope to see something more related to the original post.

Sally, I fear that you and Mr Etchells may be continuing this discussion for quite some time.
No disrespect meant to anyone.

[fastfusion]

*****
I put the trees on ancestry down to other folks right to do whatever they wish to do with them.

In all of the trees connected with my family, all have mistakes from a certain point of view.
I also take into account that working folk do not function the way perfectionist genealogists expect and may not know of resources yet or simply have tagged something as a means to an end, because of time constraints. Some folk dont know that sites like ancestry DO NOT have all the records and make assumptions.

I also believe that while the majority of folk doing trees on ancestry believe they are correct, gaps in registers or lack of knowledge may inhibit their ability to produce first class works. Then there are those folk I believe who simply want some sort of historical insight without all the finese detail, as a social revelation for their direct family or children etc..... some folk probably get bored with genealogy research and with mortgages , rent and utility bills to pay dont have the dedication they themselves would like have.

I have always started my trees from scratch, checking each level before I proceed only because I know how to do that but many dont and that is not to be assigned blame upon them.

I wouldnt have a clue how many folk are in my tree but it certainly is nowhere near the thousands that some folk claim to have.   At most , in the extreme I would assume probably under a thousand over the 9 generations studied .... but I would rather have solid profiles of each than flimsy birth to census to marriage to death and probate entries... I want the meat on the sandwich or the grit on these folk not often found through sources on the net......

to do genealogy means different things to different folk and generic trees using a standardised programme template does not allow for the associative relatives that are known to  involved such as mentions on newspaper articles of friends or distant relations or workmates etc so the anc template like others is flippin useless to me.....

I  dont have my tree on ancestry or any other site because a] its none of anyones affair and b] how can one publish a book if the content is cut and pasted willy nilly by others, and c] it cost a lot of money to research and it was for my family to share not any strange layabouts in computer closets so if the trees on anc or anywhere are incorrect well tough for u for wanting to use them in the first place.