RootsChat.Com

Quote from: coombs on Yesterday at 13:58

but as we know, until 1875, the onus was on the registrar and his deputies to be on the ball in regards to new births in the district.

The actual wording of the act was that the registrar "is hereby required to inform himself carefully of every Birth and every Death which shall happen within his District".

Records of correspondence in the RG files at TNA make it clear that there was no expectation that the registrar was supposed to go out walking the streets asking about births and deaths or to be knocking on people's doors.

He was required to live within his district and to make his address (and times of availability) known by having a sign "in some conspicuous place on or near the outer door of his own dwelling house".

Announcements placed by registrars in the newspapers of the time advertising times for registering are also quite common.

With young infant deaths in the early/mid Victorian period, although there should be both a birth and a death registration, it isn't uncommon to find only the death recorded by the registrar.

So you could say parents were in a way asked to come forward prior to 1875 then?

Dave Annal also explains that only a small percentage of births went unregistered 1837 to 1874. However that still accounts for several hundred thousand births unregistered inbetween 1837 and 1874. I have 2 direct ancestors and a few ancestor siblings whose births did not seem to be registered, both in Essex and Co Durham.

The percentage of unregistered births is more like maybe 2 to 3% 1837-1874.

Quote from: coombs on Saturday 04 May 24 18:24 BST (UK)

I have so stocked up on birth certs for ancestors siblings now, and death certs for those who died in infancy, as well as adulthood. The new feature is great. No longer having to wait up to 3 weeks like before especially when WDYTYA was on and it made demand for BMD cert orders from GRO go through the roof.

That's what I've been doing, buying the death certificates for those who died young.  Of course we had the burial registers for dates in some cases but it's interesting to see little ones who died of childhood diseases which have now almost been eradicated in this country at least and young adults  dying of illnesses that would probably be cured these days.

I have some who died quickly, of cholera "12 hours" or so, or fever 2 days etc. Adults and children as well. Also as I am sure many others will have experienced, many of my ancestors died of "phthisis" which is pulmonary TB. And sometimes after a long battle such as my ancestor Charlotte Stock who died in 1849 aged 42 of "phthisis, 2 years".

Being able to identify parentage so far back will be very much hit and miss.

I have been searching for one who fathered a child born in 1873 for near on eight years without success so far.  The usual, so many cM matches with no useful ID, shared matches and no trees that offer anything even remotely helpful.

An Ancestry DNA test is a good place to start the search.

Yes you have to be prepared for a long, long wait with DNA testing for genealogy. A 3xgreat grandparent is 6 generations back, so while in paper trail times it can be quite recent, seeing as some researchers can get a paper trail going back to Charlemagne, but in DNA terms it is a fair way back.

Good thinking, and thinking outside the box can help a lot.

My 2xgreat grandmother was illegitimate, born 31 Dec 1863 to a single mother who was the daughter of a local wheelwright. The mother Mary lived right opposite a manor house in the leafy hilly Sussex village she was born and raised in. No father named on the January 1864 birth certificate. The mother then moved to London with a fellow Sussex man (originally born Kent) in around April/May 1864 and they married in July 1864 at West Hackney church. He was a manservant, a footman. He said he was the father on the child's baptism in November 1864 at West Hackney church. Turns out he was married to a very ill wife up to November 1863 (long battle with TB) when his future wife was about 10 months pregnant. DNA testing will be the way to go to confirm my hypothesis, but also I am prepared to discover if the father was maybe another man.

I even have researched many of the other men in the village she lived at with and none seemed to be a candidate, unless he was from further afield.