Northern Ireland Adoption Children register

[chempat]

I have a Certified copy of an entry in the Adopted children register, under the Northern Ireland 1950 act.  Arrived today by post.

The person's claimed birth date (daughter's information) has always been the 28/07/1926.

Under the date birth of child heading it says, Seventh July 1947  (Column 2)

Under date of adoption order and description of court by which made it says 28/07/1926 (Column 6)

Under date of entry it says 30/06/1947 County Court, County of Tyrone... (Column 7)

In addition (column 5) Name of adopter has the mother as a widow, which happened in 1931

It certifies it is a true copy etc etc

I intend to phone tomorrow to find out what is going on, unless anyone can say why it appears to be completely topsy-turvey but that is how it is done.

I attempted to find a sample online filled-in example, but could not get anything.

Is the fact that the person was 21 in 1947 of any relevance.

In addition, in the column for name and surname of child, it just has their first 2 names, though that second name is commonly used as a surname (James).

Any suggestions gratefully received.

[Elwyn Soutter]

It looks to me as though the person recording the adoption in 1947 put some information in the wrong columns in the official record.

What GRONI generally provide is a copy (or occasionally, in the case of barely legible documents, a transcript) as it appears in the official records.  If there was a mistake in the original record, then that would be reproduced in any certified copy. They can’t just “correct” it arbitrarily.

GRONI have only been recording adoptions since January 1931 so an adoption date of 28.7.1926 can’t be correct as far as I can see.

The significance of the person approaching their 21st birthday is presumably because once you are an adult (which at that time was 21) you are no longer a child and so can’t be adopted?  So to tidy up inheritance etc, the adoptive parents decided, belatedly perhaps, to get what had until then been an informal adoption properly recognised in law. I don’t think they would have been able to do that after the child was 21. Just speculation but it might explain what happened.

Regarding the names on the certificate, it’s only been since around 1970 that a child has a surname shown on a birth certificate. Prior to that it had the child’s forename(s) with the parent(s) surnames in the relevant column. But no surname attached to the child’s forenames. The birth would be indexed under both parents names but as I say the child itself didn’t have a surname recorded. So the 1947 document doesn’t show a surname because birth certificates then (and in 1926) didn’t have one.

[chempat]

Thanks for those thoughts about the document.

I appreciate that they cannot just correct things.  I also thought official adoptions not recorded in 1926.

The column heading says name and surname of child, so I wondered what had happened to the surname.  If it had not specified surname in the heading then I would have accepted it.  That is the problem with modern forms recording old information.  Thanks

I did not want to make a complete fool of myself when I contacted them.

[chempat]

I did phone the GRONI offices.

Apparently what they see on their computer screen is
Date of entry at the head of Column 2
Date of birth at Column 6
Date of adoption order Column 7

They are sending me another one.

Interesting. Will wait and see what turns up.  The one I have is a certified true copy, stamped.

[Elwyn Soutter]

Let us know what happens. Its curious.

[iolaus]

Surely it looks like they have mixed up date of birth and date of adoption on the original

therefore when they give you a copy they have to copy the information that they have

[chempat]

No, not according to them.

What they saw on their computer screen was not what I received as my printed off copy.

I agree that the dates and columns are mixed up, but on their screen column 2 was headed date of entry, on my printed off entry column 2 was labelled date of birth.

So they read Date of entry as 1947, I read Date of birth as 1947.

What they were reading on their computer did not agree with what I had in front of me.

I am awaiting the new copy to see what it says.

[chempat]

I have now received the new copy of the adoption certificate.

The filled in hand-written information remains exactly the same in the same order in the columns.

The headings of the columns has changed.

The second column is now headed Date of Entry, 6th column is date of birth, and 7th column date of adoption.  This makes complete sense with the handwritten information.

The first copy I received was headed 'Adoption of Children Act (Northern Ireland) 1950
This had now changed to 'Adoption of Children Act (Northern Ireland) 1929

I do wonder if they printed off using the wrong template, but am not going to pursue that with them.

So, unfortunately, even official documents with official stamps are not always accurate.