Availability of Parish Registers

[BumbleB]

I'm still trying to work out your "problem" 

[Andrew Tarr]

I'm still trying to work out your "problem" 

  Sorry, whose?

[BumbleB]

No, there's no confusion; and of course we are often referring to people long dead.  But the fact that a record was made as a matter of law does not automatically make it public.  Many people are still unwilling to reveal or discuss ancestral details, so probably don't like others ferreting even if they are legally permitted to.

Possibly, your's?  You can't have it all ways up!  Records are either public for all, or not!!  You can't pick and choose.  Either close them all down, from whenever - or allow access   I don't see any problem at all.  Perhaps the question might be - WHAT have you got to hide?

[Jebber]

No, there's no confusion; and of course we are often referring to people long dead.  But the fact that a record was made as a matter of law does not automatically make it public.  Many people are still unwilling to reveal or discuss ancestral details, so probably don't like others ferreting even if they are legally permitted to.

What a lot of people forget is, that except for ones parents, and possibly grandparents, if they had a single child, our ancestors do not only belong to us, they are other people ancestors as well. This gives others just as much right to delve into our their lives as we do.

[Joy Dean]

We used to love visiting the Family Records Centre in Myddelton Street, London, searching, quarter by quarter, the big, heavy ledgers of BMDs; yes, sometimes we had backache from doing so  but I think that we had greater enjoyment and satisfaction then from the searching, face-to-face, so to speak, with the registers, more than on the internet now. We have, also, visited Mormons centres and county records offices to search microfiche and films.
An interesting article here, going back a few years
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/oct/29/britishidentity.technology

[Old Bristolian]

No, the indexing has been going on since 1837 and is automatic - either I've misunderstood you, or you have no concept of how the GRO works

I'm sorry if I have not implied strongly enough that electronics and the internet have completely altered the accessibility of the information.  I don't believe the GRO was electronically advanced in the Victorian era - the visible evidence suggests a lot of quill pens.

Sorry Andrew, when I said the indexing was automatic, I didn't imply electronic - of course it was pen & ink in the early days, but it has been indexed in large volumes from the start and these volumes have, as far as I know, been available to the public sine their inception. It's surely wrong to suggest what was once public should now be closed because of technological advances

Steve

[DavidG02]

  Many people are still unwilling to reveal or discuss ancestral details, so probably don't like others ferreting even if they are legally permitted to.

If you are talking about a matter of record ie birth death or marriage , then what is the issue?

Though I think you are confusing the availability of record sets with those ''family secrets''. Illegitimacy and bigamy and suicide are only part of a record set that has context

ie a person born on March 23 2015 is a record set , that the record set names only the mother needs context in culture. A single mother giving birth raises no eyebrows in the 21st century - so no stigma- and in 1815 - historical evidence suggests stigma was only attached to the upper classes.

Indeed, the complex picture of society in Pat Thane and Tanya Evans'  history of single motherdom, Sinners? Scroungers? Saints? Unmarried Motherhood in 20th -Century England (Oxford University Press), shows that unmarried co-habitation, for example, was common as far back as the 1800s, when records first began. Thane, Research Professor in Contemporary History at King's College London, argues that there has never been such a thing as the ideal British family unit, but instead a whole raft of diverse arrangements to which the authorities turned a blind eye – until they had to pay for it.

If a person marries bigamously then it is a matter of law and should be pursued.

Suicide is being dragged out of the hole it has stayed in for so long that it too will no longer be attached to the awkward silences in families.

[jaybelnz]

I don't get your point at all Andrew.

I can't understand all this?  We all study our family history, and we all want to seek out as many records as we can to back up our research.

I only know that I have the highest admiration for the thousands and thousands of volunteers around the world whose transcriptions have opened new pathways for me to follow in the footsteps of my family, and for that I will be eternally grateful!

If official records are available to me - they're available,  if they're not - they're not - I have to accept that, perhaps trying other avenues -  and wait.  End of story really.

Sure, we've all done it the hard way, slogging through microfilms etc for hrs at a time - doesn't make us heroes - there was no alternative.!  I for one am more than happy that I seldom have to do that any more.  On the other hand, it's quite a novel experience these days 😄

[majm]

I may be mis-understanding the original question, but I am quite sure that in some jurisdictions, for example, New South Wales, Australia, that the various denominations Parish Registers are formally owned by the local Church parish that creates them, and that access to these registers is not an automatic 'right'.    On the other hand, in more than fifty years of interest in entries in the various parish registers, I have not ever been denied access to any original register.   In some instances I have located original registers when others thought it had been lost or at least mis-placed.   

To me, it is simply a matter of being polite, asking permission and then waiting for the current incumbent to find the time to check and to respond to my request.   

I agree with DavidG02's response re matters of record, and I note that Bigamy is a civil crime.  I add that our 21st century eyes require precision almost to the nth degree, yet in my own lifetime, people were able to change their names without anyone becoming confused or suspecting the motive for such change.  The precision to exact details is currently being associated with identity theft and other adverse impacts on our society, yet in earlier generations the taboo topics included co-habitation v marriage, multiple domestic partners, and fatal self-harm. 

Civil registration of Birth, Death and Marriage events commenced at different times across the Australian continent, as in the 19th century there were FIVE separate British Colonies on the mainland, plus TWO further British Colonies nearby  (New Zealand and Tasmania)....  Each colony established its own civil registration process, however many of the denominations operated in each colony and so the church registers can contain the detail that the various civil registrations often missed.    But that does NOT give the civil authorities the right to demand access to the church registers.   Of course, the church registers can be handed over to the civil authorities, and this has occurred on many occasions across those seven former colonies, but in co-operation with rather than by demand.

It is quite possible that throughout the British Empire, that for example Church of England parish registers have been accessed by the various civil authorities, and that the processes and protocols associated with that access varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and across the decades as well.

I am somewhat amazed at Andrew's point, I am confused by much of his comment.  But I can assure Andrew that NSW parish registers commence in 1787, and that they have been accessed by parishioners from their commencement, including for the purpose of what we now know as "family history" but in my forebears time was known as 'genealogy' and 'pedigree charting'.

Cheers,  JM.