daft question - is there an index of English births?

[johking]

I know from past experience that the IGI has omissions, so if you have no idea where in England a birth may have been registered, is there any sort of country-wide index available? I am talking about a birth around 1800, 1806 at the latest. Living in Scotland, I can search all the OPRs at the GROS. Anything similar for England?

[scottcharles]

There's the freeBMD, but that only goes back as far as 1837.

There is more information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Births%2C_Marriages_and_Deaths

You may be able to find information in Parish records though. You can normally access these by enquiring (via email if you like) at the local council to the area in which the parish was.

[DudleyWinchurch]

There is also the sister site FREEREG which is not yet so complete but growing every month.

Edit: should have said that it aims to have all parish registers eventually

http://www.freebmd.rootsweb.com/

and

http://www.freereg.org.uk/

[bedfordshire boy]

Birth registration only commenced in 1837. Prior to that births were not recorded.

However baptisms were recorded in parish registers, and the nearest thing to a central index is the IGI, which as you say, is very far from complete.

[Guy Etchells]

Birth registration only commenced in 1837. Prior to that births were not recorded.

However baptisms were recorded in parish registers, and the nearest thing to a central index is the IGI, which as you say, is very far from complete.

Births were also recorded in many parish registers, and for many periods of history it was a legal requirement to record date of birth & date of death as well as date of baptism & burial.

As others have mentioned there is as yet no one database of all births in England & Wales prior to civil registration.
It is simply a matter of checking the various databases FreeBMD, UKBMD, LDS Vital Records, thousands of individual transcript sites on the web and the Parish Registers for each parish of interest.
We are very lucky these days as this has never been so easy or so cheap to do.
Cheers
Guy

[johking]

Thanks for all the help.

Yes we are lucky but I think I will have to hang on for a complete database with this one as it is needle in the haystack stuff otherwise with not a clue of where in England she might have been born (and a possibility that she was born abroad anyway!).

Many thanks

Jo

[kerryb]

Hi Jo

Depending on which counties you are looking for another site that can be useful for baptisms is www.familyhistoryonline.co.uk

Family History Groups around the country are busy transcribing records and adding them to this site, there is a small charge and as I say it depends on your county's coverage but it can be a really useful site.

Kerry 

[celia]

johking
when you did your search on the I.G.I. did you enter
British Isles, England, County unknown or All. Apart from Catholic Christenings,England and it's counties are well covered,as are Scotland,Ireland,and wales. In Scotland All My McCloys Christening & Marriages various counties,are on there going back to late 178? Course if they if a child wasn't  christened they wont be

Celia

[johking]

Thanks Kerry, didn't know about that site, nothing there but its one that is growing so I will keep an eye on it.

Thanks for suggestions, Celia. I do know there are gaps though. I was puzzled that one of my families consisted of only girls and then found from the OPR film that all the boys had been missed out, no idea why.

On the subject of the IGI, is there an easy way to find siblings? I used to do it this way: once I had found one child, I  used to put the parents names in, a year range of +/- 20 years, the correct surname in the Last Name box and then a * in the First Name box. That used to get me all the siblings of a family and was a brilliant tool. Now if you try that you get a warning message about not using punctuation marks and it doesn't work anymore.

So is there another way of finding siblings if you don't know their names, does anyone know?