GRO website - Deaths from 1984 to 2019

[Girl Guide]

I've just looked in the newer births 1984 - 2004 and they don't give the mother's maiden name.  So if you wished to know the MMN you would have to buy the cert.  No pdf offered.

[chris_49]

I don't get this. Births after 1919 are withheld, presumably on privacy grounds (you'd expect those to 1957 to be available for publication) yet we get these modern ones - people presumably mostly alive and well. I don't really need these (family history not supposed to be about living people?)

If they wanted to give us something useful, how about death records for the period 1958-69 which is the only period there are no middle names available on any index? So many of my people with common surnames can't be distinguished on these records from other people with the same forename and initial and approximate age.

[Knight-Sunderland]

I've just looked in the newer births 1984 - 2004 and they don't give the mother's maiden name.  So if you wished to know the MMN you would have to buy the cert.  No pdf offered.

I thought that as well. BUT if you make a search and include a MMN, it will come up with all those who match.

For example, when I searched for myself (born 1993), I came up without a MMN. But when I searched for myself and included a MMN in the search, it appeared next to my name on the results.

[rosie99]

I don't get this. Births after 1919 are withheld, presumably on privacy grounds (you'd expect those to 1957 to be available for publication) yet we get these modern ones - people presumably mostly alive and well. I don't really need these (family history not supposed to be about living people?)

If they wanted to give us something useful, how about death records for the period 1958-69 which is the only period there are no middle names available on any index? So many of my people with common surnames can't be distinguished on these records from other people with the same forename and initial and approximate age.

There are many topics on rootschat mentioning the projects for digitising records which were not completed, presumably that is why only certain years are available.

[medpat]

GRO started to digitise their records from 1984 so it was easy to download them for us to use. 

[dawnsh]

There really isn't anything to be gained by using the GRO site for birth searches up to 2004

You can use familysearch.org with a username and password to do a free search up to 2007 if you don't have a sub to the other sites. Results include mmn. Rechecked my daughter born 1998.

[dawnsh]

See my reply #24 re the DOVE and Magpie projects

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Register_Office_for_England_and_Wales

See quite a way down this page

[Guy Etchells]

1984 was when the GRO went all computerised, so the data was already available, so low cost. They could have done the same with births and marriages if it was not for their rule about being too close to the present.

They also changed to monthly reporting rather than quarterly. FreeBMD doesn't show that in the search results; you have to click the "spectacles" link to see the month of registration, so it is struggling to fit it in the existing structure.

Sorry but this is not correct, the GRO is not yet “ all computerised” but has the following digital records available:-

Births: 1837 – 1934 and 2007 on
Deaths: 1837 – 1957 and 2007 on
Marriages: 2011 on
Civil Partnerships: 2005 on”

The DoVE (Digitisation of Vital Events) project, which provided the early records noted above was not initiated until 2005 and the contract expired at the end of July 2008.

Cheers
Guy

[Knight-Sunderland]

GRO Indexes Updated

Births now available 1837-1934, 1984-2019
Deaths now available 1837-1957, 1984-2019