GRO indexes on gro.gov.uk !

[cuffie81]

I may be wrong, but I don't think this will make any difference to FreeBMD, in fact it may even make it more useful than ever.   In order to search the GRO you need to know the Registration District and a possible year.  It's much easier to search on FreeBMD to cover a wide range of Districts - by county for instance - and a wider range of years.

 
I agree with BumbleB

Freebmd is also useful for its postems, we just need to keep entering the details from our certificates there     

But looking ahead, if the GRO add additional search options (eg searching by county(ies), multiple districts), effectively duplicating FreeBMD functionality, how many of us would switch to using the GRO as our first port of call.

As for FreeBMD's postems, yes they are useful but have you you actually ever find any for people you've searched for? I know I haven't. I can't criticise others for not uploading details as I haven't done any myself. I did look at it once but it was quite restrictive and to include all details you're forced into abbreviating heavily and/or posting multiple entries. That said, it could be one option for FreeBMD to really differentiate itself from the GRO DB in future but that'd be moving away from it's original intention.

[BumbleB]

We'll face that when/if it happens   

In the meantime I'll continue using FreeBMD as my first port of call, and also continue transcribing for them. 

[clairec666]

FreeBMD has loads of plus points - e.g. wildcard searches and larger year ranges, which aren't available at the GRO right now.

And of course it covers a larger range of years.

Personally, I like seeing births, marriages and deaths all on the same page, so it's easy to cross-reference them - so I anticipate I'll still be using FreeBMD as much as ever.

[Scrumper]

The maiden name makes all the difference, narrowed down the birth of my gt grandad John Davies from 13 possibilities to 2, time to throw money after certificates!

[eadaoin]

Freebmd is also useful for its postems, we just need to keep entering the details from our certificates there     

As for FreeBMD's postems, yes they are useful but have you you actually ever find any for people you've searched for? I know I haven't. I can't criticise others for not uploading details as I haven't done any myself. I did look at it once but it was quite restrictive and to include all details you're forced into abbreviating heavily and/or posting multiple entries.

I'm a great believer in postems.

You don't have to include all the details - just enough to help people decide whether a cert is worth buying . . so
Birth - just give parents and road name/area
Marriages - just give fathers names. . etc

a short POSTEM is better than NO postem!

[carol8353]

I'm a great believer in postems.

You don't have to include all the details - just enough to help people decide whether a cert is worth buying . . so
Birth - just give parents and road name/area
Marriages - just give fathers names. . etc

a short POSTEM is better than NO postem!

Even a name of who married whom is useful in the early days where there are 10 names on the same page.All of the ladies with the same christian name !

I sometimes put John Smith (father Samuel) married Mary Jones (father George) better than nowt ;-) 

[Jon_ni]

Chuffie I agree I'd like to see those incorporated by the GRO, County search, Mothers maiden surname search and District/Vol/page search. As the database has taken years to get this far it is unlikely to change rappidly. However as the data is stored search improvements should be possible generating additional functionality to the present and indeed similar facilities as FreeBMD. Yes at the moment a two stage approach needs to be utilised but need that always be the case? That was the question I asked earlier. Free BMD will continue to be useful as it utilises a completely different index, the new GRO being compiled from scratch so a combined approach will assist with spelling and age errors.

I would prefer to be able to utilise the GRO as the primary and not the secondary search facility

Nick it may not always be the case but evidence from my certificates also indicate that there is no mother's maiden name recorded if the child is illegitimate just a dash. Factually correct, and if the maiden name were filled in the same as the child's surname then that would mean one they would appear identical to John Smith, Bachelor to Sarah Smith, Spinster marriages. I appreciate there is therefore no way to differentiate between an unmarried woman & an illegible/missing surname.

In terms of cost these have been discussed earlier in the thread and are documented in the S.I. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2016/980/pdfs/uksi_20160980_en.pdf

As Anthony explains the current paper certificate will remain the legal proof of a birth, marriage or death to produce to a court etc and the layout is protected by Crown Copyright with the logo. Reproduction of the entire certificate is currently permissable by law https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/reproduction-of-birth-death-marriage-certificates.pdf In Ireland an uncertified copy is the entire page of the GRO book scanned and downloadable as a pdf and in Northern Ireland just the line for the individual is displayed on your computer screen at a much reduced cost. Whether the former or the latter is followed the image you get is identical to that currently received in the middle of a £9.25 Certified copy.

I tend to do BMD searching primarilly in Ancestry and on a failure then FreeBMD, I find the slightly different facilities on search terms and wildcards useful. I upload & transcribe all my certs to my public tree, I was not aware of Postems till now.

[cuffie81]

Chuffie I agree I'd like to see those incorporated by the GRO, County search, Mothers maiden surname search and District/Vol/page search. As the database has taken years to get this far it is unlikely to change rappidly. However as the data is stored search improvements should be possible generating additional functionality to the present and indeed similar facilities as FreeBMD. Yes at the moment a two stage approach needs to be utilised but need that always be the case? That was the question I asked earlier. Free BMD will continue to be useful as it utilises a completely different index, the new GRO being compiled from scratch so a combined approach will assist with spelling and age errors.

Adding more search options shouldn't really require any changes to the database, other than maybe adding some pertinent indexes. Even supporting county searches should be fairly simple and just require mappings between districts and counties; the information must exist as FreeBMD have it listed on their site. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see if and how the GRO evolve the searches over the coming months.

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/county-map.html


As for 2 databases, I can't help thinking it's a missed opportunity. If the GRO worked with FreeBMD to create one more complete database with fewer errors and omissions it'd benefit everyone. The cynic in me thinks the GRO may want their own DB so they can commercialise it at some point.

@BumbleB, sorry for being so negative.

[Jon_ni]

Chuffie
We are both saying all the info is in the database already.
If your interested in terms of records included these are covered Guy Etchells (who posted earlier) here http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=721399.msg5653348#msg5653348 and this is the document he quotes https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/118664/23788-civil-registration.pdf.

The S.I. stipulates that access to pdf images is made via the public website known as www.gov.uk and I am reasonably confident that the index was always guarenteed to be free so I think commercialising would be hard without further passing through Parliament etc.

Had not come across the FBMD District/County listing despite using the site often, not looked I guess, but does not surprise me, had always checked localities using UKBMD. At the risk of branching off topic I asked Ancestry on their public Facebook only a 6 weeks ago why they could not reference UKBMD to correct the Counties in their records; they made no comment.

"one thing that I find frustrating (but is so common have long time accepted as just the way things are) is that far too many of the Ancestry UK BMD's are allocated to the wrong place so for example have to use the keyword Warwick rather than location 'Warwick, Warwickshire' to bring up the data. Warwick Registration district is not in Yorkshire and Oxford & Banbury are not in 'Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, Isle of Wight'. Whilst some places may share common names there is no excuse for such frequent poor labelling/allocation. It might take a bit of programming time but a better County allocaton could be pulled up from the UKBMD list of Registration Districts"