Query on 1903 Birth Registration

[loobylooayr]

It is not unusual to have a re-registration. A great uncle and aunt of mine had a daughter born in 1916. They were not married and the birth certificate only has the mother's name because the father was in the army in France. They married when he was on leave in 1917. Just before the girl married, her father went back to the district where the birth was originally registered and re-registered it. The new certificate has both parents' names and the date of their marriage.

Thank you GR2- I didn't realise that a birth could be re-registered - this is the first one I'd come across . However I can understand why people wanted to re-register , to remove the word and therefore (at that time) stigma of "illegitimate" . Just surprised they waited 56 years to do it !Bearing in mind the year, 1959, perhaps the "child" involved was applying for her first passport.

Looby

[Forfarian]

I have a copy of Bisset-Smith's Vital Registration, a manual of the Law and Practice concerning the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Scotland, published in 1902, so there may have been changes between then and 1959 in procedures.

Of illegitimate births which were originally jointly registered by both parents, or where paternity was found by a court, he says, "The Registrar, if so requested, upon production to him of an Extract of the Entry of Marriage notes the legitimation in the Register of Corrected Entries, inserting a reference thereto in the margin of the affected Birth Entry. The Extract of Marriage is necessary ... [it] is the indispensable authority for noting ...."

However, "If the paternity of a child has not been registered as having been acknowledged, nor determined by a decree of a competent Court, the Registrar cannot note the Legitimation simply on production of the parents' marriage certificate. In addition to the Marriage Extract, the Registrar requries to receive as authority for an insertion in his Register of Corrected Entries, a Warrant of the Sheriff, granted on the application of both parents, after due inquiry."