GRO website - Deaths from 1984 to 2019

[mrcakey]

That is interesting, Thank you.   

I did a trial on it for a 2015 death which did show but was surprised to see this comment on the page
If the index is incorrect and GRO are unable to locate an entry a refund will be provided minus a £3.50 administration fee.

I would suggest anyone who purchases a copy of an entry using the GRO index that the GRO are unable to locate and is charged a £3.50 fee should query the fee as being unlawful, as it is what is legally termed an unfair condition.
Cheers
Guy

I quite agree. They made the mistake and they want to charge their users £3.50 for making it.

I had to swallow a £3.50 charge recently as I'd accidentally requested a marriage cert from 1952 rather than 1852, fair enough, but institutions are milking the idea that the majority of people won't be bothered to argue with such modest charges. Amazon got my ire the other day - there was no way to return an item to them without paying a £3.99 charge (or lying about my reason for return). Very surprised Martin Lewis etc. aren't on that one with a blaze of fury.

[dawnsh]

I had a good look at both the GRO post 2007 death indexfiche at the British Library today and searched the indexes online.

The GRO results online do not show the full date of birth, only a year.

The GRO results online do not show the specific month the death was registered, only the corresponding quarter.

Interestingly, once you have identified the death entry for your person of interest, you can click on the radio button to the left of the details which then takes you straight through to ordering, so you don't have to fiddle around entering the registration spellings (right or wrong), entry numbers and dates of registration.

However, the death indexes on fiche at the 7 host sites do contain the date of birth as provided by the informant and the actual  month of registration.

So if you are happy just with the index details rather than the specifics then this is a way of killing of those distant twigs on your trees until you get a chance to go the the 7 host sites for more of the registartion details.

[chris_49]

Dawn offered to look these up for people, at the BL I think. I didn't take her up on it, thought it'd be a lot of work for her - said I'd wait until I got a chance to go down to Manchester to look for myself. I'm glad I did neither, because...

I'm working my way through the GRO indices. Not finding so many of the ones I was hoping to - quite a lot missing - did these people emigrate, live to over 100, remarry, get their details given badly wrong at death (age, mistranscription)? Who knows?

Then I'll have a shorter day at Manchester looking up the ones I have found.

[dawnsh]

In this day and age of greater longevity, routine death searches for me now go up to age 105.

If they reach 111, they appear on the super-centenarians list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_supercentenarians

[Knight-Sunderland]

I'm so pleased they have made this index available.

The search format is still quite restrictive and I'm not sure why they haven't published the DOB's, but it will do for now!

[Guy Etchells]

I'm so pleased they have made this index available.

The search format is still quite restrictive and I'm not sure why they haven't published the DOB's, but it will do for now!

The short answer is they believe they are not allowed to publish such information except on a certificate or now on a pdf file.
As far as I can tell this view seemed to come into being around 1879 when the GRO withdrew "their" registers from public viewing (without any change in the law).

The truth of the matter is if they publish the dates of birth they will miss out on sales.
Cheers
Guy

[Douglas P]

If you have an idea of the year of death it can be useful to also look for a corresponding entry in the probate index as this gives the full date of death and middle names.

https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#wills

[barryd]

I am confused. Does this mean Free BDM will just cease to exist in the future?

[rosie99]

I am confused. Does this mean Free BDM will just cease to exist in the future?

No, because it is a lot easier to search than the GRO index which you can only do 5 years at a time and male or female