Was it common for people to be baptized BEFORE they were born ? ;)

[dathai]

There were fines for late registrations not sure of the time allowed to do so.

see Administative divisions and procedures here
near bottom of paragraph sentence starts
''it is widely acknowledged that for a variety reasons''
http://pwaldron.info/CivilReg.html

[kob3203]

Here's another one, same family:

Michael Brown, bap 20 Oct, born 10 Nov 1867, birth registered 6 Jan 1868:
- Bap : http://registers.nli.ie/registers/vtls000632227#page/94/mode/1up (bottom of left page - you need toincrease contrast and brightness,but it's fairly clear when you do)
- Birth: https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/details-civil/a6a7183643487 (first entry)

[kob3203]

There were fines for late registrations not sure of the time allowed to do so.

see Administative divisions and procedures here
near bottom of paragraph sentence starts
''it is widely acknowledged that for a variety reasons''
http://pwaldron.info/CivilReg.html

Thank you ! That's the sort of explanation that makes sense of it. The enlightening sentence reads:

"It is widely acknowledged that for a variety of reasons not all births, marriages or deaths were registered, and others were registered incorrectly. There were fines for late registration, which acted as an incentive to lie, so it is very common to find that the birth date on a birth certificate is later, often considerably later, than the christening date on the corresponding baptismal certificate. This was one way of avoiding the fine. This failure to register or to register truthfully is the first of the several steps where there is scope for errors."

(I hope that Father J.Crotty will forgive me for any aspersions I may have cast on his good name! :-)

[dathai]

possibly 6 weeks time allowed
http://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/Ireland-birth-records.html

edited to add see bottom cert for Patrick Tierney

[Maiden Stone]

There were fines for late registrations not sure of the time allowed to do so.

see Administative divisions and procedures here
near bottom of paragraph sentence starts
''it is widely acknowledged that for a variety reasons''
http://pwaldron.info/CivilReg.html

Thank you ! That's the sort of explanation that makes sense of it. The enlightening sentence reads:

"It is widely acknowledged that for a variety of reasons not all births, marriages or deaths were registered, and others were registered incorrectly. There were fines for late registration, which acted as an incentive to lie, so it is very common to find that the birth date on a birth certificate is later, often considerably later, than the christening date on the corresponding baptismal certificate. This was one way of avoiding the fine. This failure to register or to register truthfully is the first of the several steps where there is scope for errors."

An uncle of mine was born in Ireland and probably baptised there. Family then returned to England. When parents got around to registering baby it was past the allotted time, so his official DOB was 2 months later than the real date. DOB of my mother in baptismal register was different from the date she said she was born. One of my brothers has 2 DOBs. We used to joke that nobody in the family knew their real DOB. To our surprise Dad's official DOB was what he thought it was, and Grandad's age on his tombstone was correct.

Take into account parents' attitude to : 1. officialdom ;  2. church. 
My granddad was a religious man, but apparently saw nothing wrong with "alternative facts " on state records. His 1911 census return, for instance, includes several "inaccuracies".

[Sinann]

I've got quite a few people 'born' after they were baptised, I put it down to mother having enough to do with a new baby and lots of other children to care for and father busy on the farm because of the time of year, who had time to bother with registering a birth.

There is one I wish I could solve though. My mother's father said he was born 4 July, FamilySearch extracted record says the 16 July but no christening date, his birth cert says the 16 July, as such it doesn't matter which is correct but if he is the 16th than my mother has a father, husband and first born child all born on the 16 July. Which would be pretty cool.

[heywood]

We celebrated my dad's birthday on 22nd January, we had a baptism certificate for 26th of the same month and when he checked his birth details for his pension, his date of birth was 2nd February.
He was registered towards the end of April more than two months after the alleged date of birth.
I know of several Irish people with similar stories.
The most important thing would be to have the child baptised. Registration was, I suppose when it could be arranged.

[frostyknight]

I have come across this too. The baptism would take place quickly, within couple of days, the registration could be a good deal later. People probably had enough to do with work, looking after the children etc, and if they lived out in the country, it could be some time before someone got around to registering the birth. (And sometimes they didn't get around to it at all, lol)

[kob3203]

So it sounds quite common then to be officially (according to civil registration) born after one was baptized. With Ancestry's free UK/Irish records this weekend I've been searching through the temporarily free Irish baptism records* and I've already found missing baptisms for a couple of people before they were officially born. So it's a good thing to know.

*N.B. the scans are permanently free on the NLI website as noted in sinann's post below. It's the transcriptions which aren't usually free.