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Hello,

My father was born July 1910 ,so I take it the child who died was the first born

Mary

Was your father younger or older than his sibling when was he born

Thank you all for your help I understand why birth?death differ now
Mary

The date and place of death. Most deaths are registered within a day or two of the date of death. Today a death certified by a doctor should be registered within 5 days of the death and a death certified after a post-mortem within 14 days. If there has been an accident or suspicious circumstances or an unexplained death and an inquest has been held, the lag between death and registration could be as long as a year although in the past the delay was still only a couple of weeks. The death is not registered until the inquest has been held.

If the death being registered is that of a baby that lived for less than 24 hours, then these days the hours or minutes that the baby lived would be shown with words such as "Aged 2 hours" or "Aged 11 minutes" but I do not think this was common practice in the last century.

And

Date of Registration
This is very relevant to the indexes because birth, death and marriage indexes are compiled by the date of registration NOT the date of the event ( in marriages these 2 dates are usually the same but can be very different in births and deaths). So a baby born on eg 25th November 1851 that was not registered until 2nd January 1852 would be indexed in the March quarter for 1852 not the December quarter for 1851.

In the early days the parents had 3 weeks to register in and could not register at all after 3 months. After a while this was changed to 6 weeks to register in, a late registration could be made up to a year after the birth if the superintendent took the information and signed the register too, and registration could not take place after 1 year without reference to GRO. Once the delay was this long then proof of the event had to be provided by other parties who knew of this event eg midwife or doctor or siblings alive at the time and able to recall the event. Even now, if it is not possible to provide the proof and/or the people who can attest to the truth of the event it is not possible to register and there are people walking around today with no birth certificate.

It means, therefore, that a birth registered very late could be in the indexes a whole year later or more than expected. It is also relevant in that there were penalties for late registrations that were quite severe in the beginning and rather than get into trouble parents would "adjust" the date of birth to fall within the specified time for registration. If you have a discrepancy between a date of birth on a certificate and one given on a baptismal certificate, have a look at the date of registration. If it is very close to the six weeks, it is quite likely that the parents didn't tell the truth at registration but did at baptism where there were no penalties. There were no checks on the dates of birth until well into this century.

From http://home.clara.net/dixons/Index.htm

Roy

It is entirely possible that the death could have been registered before the births.

As chrissie says, mothers had 6 weeks to register a birth, while deaths had to be registered within 8 days, and marriages were registered immediately.


Some people have also found deaths registered but no birth to match.


Usually this happened when the baby died very soon after birth and the parents were too distraught to think of registering the birth.


If you find a death registration, it does mean that the child took at least 1 breath after birth.



The other possibility could be a stillborn child ............... but in this case there would be no birth or death registration in the usual way.



sylvia

Hello,

On the 1911 census it says my Grandmother had 2 children 1 still liviing that was my father

My grandmother married in 1907 so I have gone through all births and deaths inbetween 1907 and 1911 the name I have is Florence Jane Hyde b2nd Q the deathdeath is registered inthe 1st Q both in Dudley Staffordshire It does not give mothers maiden name so not sure if this is the correct child Mary

is the name unusual, is the death an infant aged 0, is there any other birth with that name in the previous year in the same area, is the death in the same place as the birth ?

it is possible that the death could have been registered first I think, as there was 6 weeks to register the birth and the parents could have been grieving and occupied ... there could have been only a short time between registration late in one quarter and early in the next ...

you say you are looking for the child, do you know that she died ?

if you want to give the name we might be able to give a more informed opinion :-)

I have found who I think could be on my tree the problem I have isthe birth says she was born 2nd Q 1908 and the death is the 1stQ 1908 I am not sure if this the child I am looking for but it stands a chance but her death could not be registered before she was born?? any ideas please Mary