Searching the new GRO indexes - share your tips!

[louisa maud]

To all those who helped me initially on the original GRO.GOV UK subject  I have now received the cert for my James Henry Ellis, searched for 20 years or so and it was girl guide who actually found my man, Christian names back to front and a different surname to what I expected but the details otherwise was what I would have expected, so thank you to those  who helped me,  my brick wall has now been knocked down 

Louisa Maud

[tillypeg]

Brick walls being knocked down!  Death cert for James Wisdom 1st Oct 1861 received this afternoon.   Had never found him in 1861 Census but by searching for the person who registered the death, was able to find James, who was the lodger.  His surname was badly written and had been transcribed as Widow!

Never give up the search.

[bugbear]

While you cannot search by county specifically, you can add a volume number, which roughly correlates with the registration counties. A listing of volume to county numbers is here:
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/civreg/GROIndexes

That is stunningly helpful - thank you.

 BugBear

[ChrissieL]

Thank you for the tips about the age on the death certificates. I have been looking for my gggrandfathers brother who died as an infant. I found his name but initially disregarded it as the age given was 21. Thanks to your tips I realise that this could be 21 months so I have sent for the PDF
Thanks

Chris

[clairec666]

Thank you for the tips about the age on the death certificates. I have been looking for my gggrandfathers brother who died as an infant. I found his name but initially disregarded it as the age given was 21. Thanks to your tips I realise that this could be 21 months so I have sent for the PDF
Thanks

Chris

For deaths after 1866, you can cross-reference the age with FreeBMD, or for earlier deaths, see if you can find a burial which shows the correct age. Otherwise, I guess you'll have no idea until the PDF arrives whether it's weeks, months or years.

[Nick_Ips]

I've been looking at deaths I'd previously found on FreeBMD with ages '0' or '1'.

On the new GRO index the FreeBMD '0's are coming up as '0' or a number between 1 and 11.

FreeBMD '1's are coming up on the new GRO index as a mix of '1' or a number between 12 and 22 (not seen a 23 yet).

My hunch is the numbers where a '0' or '1' is expected are generally in months, but there may not be consistency.

I.e.
Up to 1 month = 0
Up to 1 year = a number representing between 1 and 11 months
Over 1 year but less than 2 years = either '1' or a number representing between 12 and 23 months

I'd be interested to hear of any known ages less than 1 month which are shown as a number of weeks/days.

This does appear to be a bit of a mess. Unfortuantely I fear the GRO will 'solve' the problem by editing the ages to '0' rather than changing the website to correctly search and display ages in days/weeks/months. 

So I'd say it should be a priority to look at children who you know died at a very early age (i.e. you have already found them on FreeBMD with a '0' or '1') and make a note of the number in the age column in the new index. Working out whether it is days/weeks/months can happen later  That is what's kept me busy this weekend.

[clairec666]

This does appear to be a bit of a mess. Unfortuantely I fear the GRO will 'solve' the problem by editing the ages to '0' rather than changing the website to correctly search and display ages in days/weeks/months. 

That's what I'm worried about, too! Make use of this information, before it potentially disappears - even if it needs a bit of "interpreting".

[Nick_Ips]

Another tip, from the outcome of another thread and thanks to users vrvt and jonw65, it appears some whole pages have been missed from the transcription process for the new GRO index.

If you are searching for someone who appears on the FreeBMD index, but not the new GRO one, then try using FreeBMD to get the details of the other people with the same GRO Reference. (I.e. the same year, quarter, volume and page)

In FreeBMD clicking on the blue hyperlinked page number for the person you are interested in will perform this search automatically and very quickly.

Then try searching in the new GRO index for some of the other people returned by the FreeBMD search.

If none of them come up in the new GRO index it suggests the whole page was missed and there is no point trying different search combinations to find the individual you were originally looking for.

Following this proceedure after trying some of the more obvious GRO search variations will save time and frustration searching the GRO index for someone who simply isn't there. (Yet  )

[Hammerman]

Just because you can't find the entry in the new GRO Index doesn't mean that the pdf is not available.

I entered my order the old fashioned way with the references copied from FreeBMD, and then clicked on 'pdf copy' on the order page. Only when I checked some of the GRO indexes later I found two that were on FreeBMD but not on the GRO Index. I have already received one of them so it's worth trying this way!