Author Topic: New GRO pilot birth and death indexes - discover lost children - mortality rates  (Read 3641 times)

Offline melba_schmelba

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Re: New GRO pilot birth and death indexes - discover lost children - mortality rates
« Reply #9 on: Saturday 22 April 17 19:57 BST (UK) »
Surely the GRO must have recorded the time unit when they transcribed the records. If so, I really don't understand why they haven't got around to updating the display. Simply including the unit (y, m, w, d, h) would suffice.
Is that possibly being somewhat optimistic ::)? I can easily see it's a detail that might have been overlooked when the input databases were created or in the instruction of the transcribers i.e. if they weren't specifically told to translate weeks/months into 0-1-2 years then the data input will have just been wrong if the only input box was years.

Offline iolaus

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Re: New GRO pilot birth and death indexes - discover lost children - mortality rates
« Reply #10 on: Saturday 22 April 17 23:21 BST (UK) »
it's quite handy to compare them to the freebmd death index - if that states 0 or 1 and the GRO states a number you can roughly work out if it's months/weeks due to the quarter they are registered in

I discovered that rather than my great grandmother being the eldest of 4, one of whom had died young (I found her baptism record - they only had 3 children baptised, all at the same time - they had already lost 3 children) she was actually the eldest of 11, 8 of which died under 13 months - her mother dying in childbirth with the youngest when she was 12

Offline Andrew Tarr

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Re: New GRO pilot birth and death indexes - discover lost children - mortality rates
« Reply #11 on: Sunday 23 April 17 09:32 BST (UK) »
Another difficulty may be matching the birth and death records of infants.  A g-g-uncle of mine died aged 5 days in 1842, both events registered immediately by his father.  He was given a birth name, but was anonymous at death, I assume because he had not been baptised.  There is no doubt of his identity, but the match is not self-evident.  If his surname had been a common one, that might have been harder.
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Offline clairec666

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Re: New GRO pilot birth and death indexes - discover lost children - mortality rates
« Reply #12 on: Sunday 23 April 17 10:34 BST (UK) »
Another difficulty may be matching the birth and death records of infants.  A g-g-uncle of mine died aged 5 days in 1842, both events registered immediately by his father.  He was given a birth name, but was anonymous at death, I assume because he had not been baptised.  There is no doubt of his identity, but the match is not self-evident.  If his surname had been a common one, that might have been harder.

Good advise. I've also seen a couple of infant deaths where their deaths were recorded in the previous quarter to their births - so it looks like they died before they were born.
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Offline melba_schmelba

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Re: New GRO pilot birth and death indexes - discover lost children - mortality rates
« Reply #13 on: Sunday 23 April 17 18:47 BST (UK) »
I discovered that rather than my great grandmother being the eldest of 4, one of whom had died young (I found her baptism record - they only had 3 children baptised, all at the same time - they had already lost 3 children) she was actually the eldest of 11, 8 of which died under 13 months - her mother dying in childbirth with the youngest when she was 12
It's incredibly sad isn't it, to consider the psychological effect it would have had on you as a parent, and as a sibling, that you'd actually expect one of you to die at any time....

  I have had a few more interesting revelations in discoveries of some of the lost children in my tree, in the fact they have surnames in their forenames. One of which I know is a grandmother's maiden name, and the other after a bit of digging I realised is an uncle's first name, indicating that they were presumably close. I'd definitely recommend checking your own trees as these clues may be very useful in tracing further back.

Online AntonyMMM

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Re: New GRO pilot birth and death indexes - discover lost children - mortality rates
« Reply #14 on: Monday 24 April 17 10:19 BST (UK) »

Surely the GRO must have recorded the time unit when they transcribed the records. If so, I really don't understand why they haven't got around to updating the display. Simply including the unit (y, m, w, d, h) would suffice.

Sadly I understand that the data wasn't captured properly during transcription.  The transcriptions were done some time ago as part of an abandoned previous project and were outsourced through the IT systems provider involved at the time, and the quality isn't that great - but it is better than we had before !

GRO advice is to use the "report" function for any entry you think is wrong and they will check against the register entry and update the index if appropriate.

The release of the indexes and the trials of the pdf delivery options went live at the same time, but aren't directly connected.


Offline cuffie81

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Re: New GRO pilot birth and death indexes - discover lost children - mortality rates
« Reply #15 on: Monday 24 April 17 13:18 BST (UK) »
Surely the GRO must have recorded the time unit when they transcribed the records. If so, I really don't understand why they haven't got around to updating the display. Simply including the unit (y, m, w, d, h) would suffice.

Sadly I understand that the data wasn't captured properly during transcription.

It looks like melba is correct and that I'm too optimistic then. I just find it hard to understand how the GRO could have allowed the project to inaccurately transcribe the death ages, which is what has happened if they haven't recorded the time unit. A bit of clarification from the GRO would be nice.

For the post-1865 (?) death records the FreeBMD transcripts could be used to identify the GRO transcripts that need review. But that would require the GRO and FreeBMD working together and the GRO to be willing to review the (10s/100s of thousands) records, which all seems unlikely.


I realise I'm sounding quite negative here but I'm really not. The GRO indexes have been a great help to me personally and I just wanted to warn people to be a bit cautious with the death ages.



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Online BumbleB

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Re: New GRO pilot birth and death indexes - discover lost children - mortality rates
« Reply #16 on: Monday 24 April 17 16:11 BST (UK) »
Just a minute, cuffie81 - FreeBMD death transcriptions are taken from the GRO indices, and neither indicate whether it is days, weeks, months or years   :-\ :-\  The only people who have access to records to verify d, w, m or y is GRO themselves.
Transcriptions and NBI are merely finding aids.  They are NOT a substitute for original record entries.
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Offline cuffie81

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Re: New GRO pilot birth and death indexes - discover lost children - mortality rates
« Reply #17 on: Monday 24 April 17 17:19 BST (UK) »
BumbleB,

I think you misunderstood me but I've probably haven't explained myself well.

What I was suggesting was that as the FreeBMD death ages are in years, for any corresponding GRO index record where the age doesn't match the FreeBMD value, and the FreeBMD age is zero or one, it flags up a potentially inaccurate GRO index record (where the age is likely in days, weeks or months, rather than years). Any FreeBMD record where the age is 2 or greater can be treated as years and thus shouldn't be at issue in the GRO index, and could be ignored.

For example:
FreeBMD record:
1876 Q4 Blanche Elizabeth J Shaw; age 1; Portsea; 2b; 270

GRO record:
1876 Q4 Blanche Elizabeth Jane Shaw; age 15; Portsea Island; 02b; 270

Blanche was 15 months old when she died. So in this example comparing the ages would flag up the (actual) issue in the GRO record.



As an aside, death ages in hours don't appear to have the issue in the GRO index, and in the examples I have, the ages have been recorded as zero.
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