Death Certificate Error? Help, Please

[Shaztoni]

You have to remember also that the parents may never have married, I had a similar problem with one of my Scottish deaths, luckily I managed to find the mothers death cert where she was under her maiden name and single (it was registered luckily by her son in law the spouse of the person I was looking for)

Sharon

[RJ_Paton]

The naming pattern is certainly evidence towards your links but not conclusive as it was not always followed.

Re the names of the Williams parents ... you must remember two things here

• its a traumatic time reporting the death of a parent and the effect this has
• The reporter of Williams death may not have known his grandparents full names as presumably they died sometime before

The second coupled with the emotions of the first can cause quite a few problems for posterity.

[Rodeo]

Thanks, Sharon and Robert, for your help.

Cheers,

Rodeo

[corinne]

The information given on death certificates (other than cause of death) is only as good as the information known by the informant.  Even if the informant is a child of the deceased, they may still not be sure of some of the details.  I know myself that if anyone other than her children had to give my mums name they'd get it completely wrong as the name she has been known by all her life is actually just taken from her initials - even the local hospital can't get her name right on their records.   I've known instances where first names have been switched in order, because the person has been called by their second name, ages completely wrong, etc. 

[Forfarian]

Thanks for your message. According to the death certificate, the informant was William's son, William. However, as I mentioned, the death wasn't registered until six days after the event and the cause was certified by the surgeon who had seen the deceased three days before but wasn't present at the death. Isn't it possible, then, that it was the surgeon rather than William's son who registered the death?

No, the rules were quite clear. The informant had to state his name and relationship to the deceased. If it had been the doctor (unusual) he would have said so. The delay wasn't unusual - perhaps William was living somewhere else and it took a few days for him to be told and to be able to get to his father's home.

[Forfarian]

There is a web site around where people offer graveyard lookups - Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness  RAGK - do a google for it - I have had 2 wonderful folks on there do lookups for me.

It's RAOGK actually - http://www.raogk.org/