General Chat

hi all wounder if any one could help me? If a baby was born a still born would he or she be issued a birth certificate or a death certificate straight away? Regards Paul Mayo

Hi Paul ,
i had a still born in 1961
and there was no death cert then ,,,
but dont know if they do certs now ..
Hazelx

Stillbirths were not classified as being born so there are no certificates.
There is a register for stillbirths from 1927 but I believe it is not accessible.

Paul,

To obtain a Stillbirth Certificate you need to be a parent of the child, or if they are deceased, a sibling.

This does, of course, depend on the era the baby was born.

When I applied for a certificate from a birth in the 1970s, the GRO were very helpful during a phonecall to them. I do not believe you can apply online in the normal way.

Elisabeth

Thanks all only reason im asking is I am tracing my family history and i think i may have found another realation. Its on the death register as 0 but can not find a birth entry for that year and the year befor?

Paul,

It is possible that it is a mistranscription of the age at death, or you are looking for an exact match to the name when it might have been a name used by the family. (i.e. John known as Jack etc.) Just a suggestion.

Elisabeth

Hi,

Check just after the child's death was registered for the birth.......... often the death was registered before the birth.

If a death cert was registered the child I think should have been alive and not still born....... if I'm wrong someone will say.


Dee x

My friend has a still born certificate , she had to apply for it herself , this was way back in 1970.

A still born is legally defined as a child born after 24th week of Pregnancy and must be registered in England and Wales.

I understand that only the parents can apply but should they pass on, then I think the next of kin can apply.

It used to be 28 weeks until quite recently.

I found a relation on Ancestry born in 1905 and no mention of him on 1911 census. I looked up deaths but found nothing, then looked again and saw that they had his second name spelled wrong, leaving off the last two letters.
This death certificate had 0 for age, and he died the same year as born 1905. even the same month.
Sometimes the names have been transcribed wrongly.

My one son lived for 15 minutes after full-term birth. I have never been able to obtain a birth cert, but he has a grave and marker, how can they process and obtain permit for burial if no birth occured? Surely if a mother has been delivered, a birth has occured. I am going to try now for a stillbirth cert, as they may have entered it that way, as life was so fleeting.
It would really help closure even 35 years later.
Mary

Mary,
I always thought that if a child breathed it was considered a live baby, irrespective of how long you carried the baby.
So I don't know why you never had your baby registered.

With a still born its the doctor or midwife that issue's a certificate of a Still Birth and taken to the registrar in the place it was born.

I would look into it if I were you Mary...hope you get some sort of explanation .

Good luck Mary. x

I used to do the Births and Deaths Registrations here in NZ in the seventies (it was at a local Post Office and the deaths were just for the one funeral director).

The parents were always required to register the birth within so many days/weeks and I only struck one case in the whole time I did it where the Funeral Director registered the Birth (the child lived for a few hours) and death. The mother came to see me later and sign the registry - it was so sad - the only time I cried after doing a registration.

I know now when looking up family history - I have come across in the birth registrations and here you can look up births of 100 years or more ago and still births 50 years ago - they usually have 0 in the years column. I have not seen them show up in the deaths as well.

Regards

Norma

If you found a death with the age given as 0, then it means that the child was anything under 1 year old - it could be 11 months and 3 weeks old. If the death was registered, so should the birth be.

Do you want to give details (or is it too recent to put the information on the boards?) so we can check for you?

Kath. x

I wrote off re a stillborn brother I had, only know my Dad was told by the midwife to bury him in the garden and his name was Richard, he would have been born in 1946. This is a copy of the reply I got, but haven't had time to do anything further at the mo:

Thank you for your enquiry. I hope that the following information, obtained from the General Register Office website, will be of some help to you. As we do not hold still birth registers here, you will need to make your application to G.R.O.

Stillbirths
Obtaining Stillbirth Certificates


Due to the sensitive nature of stillbirth registrations, the procedure for ordering a certificate of the entry differs from other types of certificates. We will only send out the application form after we have been contacted by phone or in writing by the mother or father (if he is named on the certificate). In cases where the parents are deceased, a brother or sister can apply if they can provide their parents’ dates of death.

The cost of the certificate is £7.

Phone +44 (0)845 603 7788
Opening hours: Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm GMT (excluding bank holidays) and Saturday 9am to 4pm GMT.


Or write to us at:
General Register Office
PO Box 2
Southport
Merseyside
PR8 2JD

For Welsh speakers, a Welsh helpline service is available on +44 (0) 151 471 4575.

Written enquiries in Welsh should be sent to:
Y Swyddfa Gofrestru Gyffredinol
Blwch Post 118
Smedley Hydro
Trafalgar Road
Southport
PR8 2GQ
____________


Lizx

still births are issued death certs and currently they are issued pretty quicly as the hospitals arrange appointments for you to visit the registrar, We experienced this our baby was delivered at 26 weeks this was in the 1990's

If a child breathes and lives only a few mins, it gets two certs- a birth & a death, as that is what has happened, the child was born and then died.

if a child is stillborn, hard though it sounds, he neither lived nor died, and goes on still birth register - for which there is only one cert, as there is only one event to record - that being 'stillbrth''

Thanks for those details Sparkly,
Im going to get a cert in my mothers name as she is still alive...her baby was stillborn 1956.
She will be really pleased with being able to do this,as she has only recently been talking to funeral directors about her burial.
Kay