Is there a Logical Answer?

[LizzieL]

My birth (early 1950s) was registered when the local registrar came round to the maternity hospital. The short certificate was all that was offered. My brother's birth a few years later, was registered at a register office, possibly my father was offered short or long, but only came away with the long. OH's birth (late 1940's) registered at RO, has long certificate, so not necessarily connected to year, but how birth was registered.

[suey]

Just to add - when you are all ordering birth certificates from the gro you automatically get a full (long) birth certificate and assume that the person concerned also had that, thus showing all information, some of it contrary to what was used in life.

As proved by Lizzie and I not everybody was provided with a full birth certificate and may not ever have purchased one so there is a name on the full certificate which is likely to have been used as their official name in life and maybe a different one to that they were known as.

Does anybody know when short certificates were replaced by long ones?  Mine was issued in 1956 but both my sister 1959 and brother 1961 have long certificates, but they were both born in a different county to me.  Could that have anything to do with it?

Pheno

1978 and 1980 - I have both long and short certs for these two dates so certainly still available at those dates.
Not thought about this until now. Have they been replaced or is it that the short version is issued free and the longer version has to be paid for ?  I have several ‘historic’ short versions.

[LizzieL]

Although the short form is a government issued document, many government departments will not now accept it as evidence of a person's birth and demand that they get a long form certificate.

In 2012, the HR manager at the company I then worked for was told by the DWP or border / immigration authorities (can't remember which) that they would be checking all the employees to prove their right to work in the UK. The HR manager had all the relevant documentation on file for recent employees and non-UK nationals, but some UK citizens had been employed before it became the employer's responsibility to verify right to work and no retrospective check had been done. All these long standing employees were asked to bring in either passport or long form birth certificate. One of my colleagues who was almost 70 at the time and semi-retired only had a short birth certificate and no current passport. Fortunately he had kept his expired passport and that was accepted as proof.

[AntonyMMM]

Everyone is still talking about registered birth surnames. 
In England & Wales there were NO registered birth surnames until 1969!

This is absolutely correct, and is one of the things I discuss at length when giving talks on the subject (as I have done twice this week).  It is something  very important to understand when searching birth indexes.

Along with it, you also need to remember that the birth register entry (the only original document) and any certificates produced from it are two very different things.

A birth register entry in E/W doesn't show any surname for the child before the major changes made in 1969. Before that column two is headed "Name, if any" and anything written there are the forenames of the child. The change came in the Registration Act of 1968 which now included the phrase "...the surname to be entered shall be the surname by which at the date of registration of the birth it is intended that the child shall be known ..". Before that there was no indication of any  "registered surname".


As there was no surname for the child, this was a problem for the GRO indexers - how do you make an index for the births ? The answer is that births are actually indexed under one (or both) of the named parents' surnames depending on their marital status..

If both parents are named and married, then it will be indexed under the father's surname. If there is no father named it will be indexed under the mother's surname. If both are named but not married it will be indexed twice, appearing under each surname. If either parent has more than one surname shown ( e.g. "otherwise SMITH), it may be indexed under that as well*.

These conventions would also be followed when completing a "Short form certificate", and on the "Certificate of Registry of Birth", which preceded it. A full birth certificate, which is a direct copy of the register entry, and has always been available as a "paid for extra",  doesn't give a surname.

After 1969, the informant was asked to specify the surname of the child ( Space 2 was now headed "Name and surname" and the surname should be shown in capitals) and things become a little clearer, although double indexing for children born illegitimately still applied.

The rules in Scotland have always been different.



*note that the new GRO On-line Index uses a slightly different set of indexing rules so the results when searching that can, and often will, be different to the results you might get on FreeBMD  or similar.

[Pheno]

Yes but how did one know what the registered entries were if the only certificate supplied was a short form which does give both first names and surname.  Surprisingly, never having looked it up, I have no idea of the info about my father's name/occupation/residence as given at registration as it is not on any certificate I have.

If our 1880ish ancestors only had a short form certificate they may never have known precisely what info was registered and maybe wouldn't know who was detailed as their father.  They wouldn't necessarily have known that they might, in life, be using a different surname.

I think, assuming what you get from the gro, is what the individual got, is flawed.

Pheno

[LizzieL]

Yes but how did one know what the registered entries were if the only certificate supplied was a short form which does give both first names and surname.  Surprisingly, never having looked it up, I have no idea of the info about my father's name/occupation/residence as given at registration as it is not on any certificate I have.

I have precisely the same situation.

[Sloe Gin]

Thanks, Antony.  We are lucky to have your professional knowledge.

[Pinetree]

Thank you for that explanation Antony. It’s so interesting to get the full facts from an expert on something you tend to assume is fairly simple. Does this mean there is a clever way of using the index to establish if the father is mentioned on the birth certificate of an illegitimate child by finding the same reference number with a different surname?

Pinetree

[AntonyMMM]

Does this mean there is a clever way of using the index to establish if the father is mentioned on the birth certificate of an illegitimate child by finding the same reference number with a different surname?

To some extent yes you can. The easiest way is to use FreeBMD, find an entry and then click on the page number  - that will show you other entries with the same reference, and you might spot an entry which has been indexed twice. The fact that the old printed index and the GRO on-line index use different rules can also be helpful to compare the result you get from each.

But - there are always other explanations and possibilities and working just from an index entry always involves the risk of going wrong because you are using guesswork and making assumptions. For instance even where there is a maiden name shown (different from the indexed surname), it doesn't mean the father is named on the entry or that the mother is married to the father.

You can't be 100% sure without seeing a certificate.