Register office question

[Davedrave]

I have some family events which happened in Belgrave, Leicestershire. In the later C19th Belgrave was still a village in the county, though comparatively close to the centre of the county town (now a city suburb.)
Belgrave was then in Barrow on Soar registration district and in the Rothley sub district. I’m just wondering where my relatives who registered a birth or death would have gone to inform the registrar. I’ve not found anything helpful in Kelly’s or other directories of the time. Would a sub district have had its own office? I’m assuming that sub-districts maybe provided a more local service for people. My ancestors must have known where to go, so I wonder what their source of information was.

Dave

[KGarrad]

Sub-district offices could handle registration of births and deaths, but not marriages.

Sub-districts in Barrow Upon Soar Registration District were:
Anstey, Barrow upon Soar, Mountsorrel, Quorndon, Rothley, Sileby, Syston.

see: https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/barrow%20upon%20soar.html

[Davedrave]

Sub-district offices could handle registration of births and deaths, but not marriages.

Sub-districts in Barrow Upon Soar Registration District were:
Anstey, Barrow upon Soar, Mountsorrel, Quorndon, Rothley, Sileby, Syston.

see: https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/barrow%20upon%20soar.html

Thanks for clarifying the point about marriages. Re the sub-district offices, my question was really about how I might find out where the sub-district office was. I assume that the Rothley sub-district office was a building situated somewhere in Rothley, so I assume that my informant relative would have either had a round trip on foot of quite a few miles, or maybe got a horse omnibus, or hitched a lift on a farm cart (or did he ride a penny farthing? ). Looking in the local directories I’ve been unable to find an entry for a Rothley office. One possibility that I wonder about is that it seems that the Barrow Union workhouse was in Rothley: maybe there?

Dave

[KGarrad]

Post Office Directories, and others such as Kelly's, will show the address of Registrars.
You just need to look at a directory close to the time you are interested in.

May not have been a building rather than just an office.
Sub-district registrars usually had other jobs.

Also, bear in mind that people often walked many miles back then!

[Davedrave]

Post Office Directories, and others such as Kelly's, will show the address of Registrars.
You just need to look at a directory close to the time you are interested in.

May not have been a building rather than just an office.
Sub-district registrars usually had other jobs.

Also, bear in mind that people often walked many miles back then!

Thanks. In fact this registrar, as you suggest, had other roles, chair of this, that and the other board too, according to Kelly’s. It looks as if he was based in Mountsorrel, so a good 10 mile round trip, but on the main Leicester to Loughborough (and Derby) road, so probably reasonable public transport then (probably better than today).

It now occurs to me that the doctor certifying the death would almost certainly have told the informant where to go to register the death.

Dave

[AntonyMMM]

The 1836 Birth and Death Registration Act required that every "Registrar & Deputy Registrar shall dwell within the district"  and also that they should have a notice or sign on the door of the office( which would often be their own house)  so people could find them.

People needed to know where to go to register, so you do often also find newspaper announcements of the location of the registrar's office.

In 1867 the Barrow on Soar Guardians advertised for a registrar for Rothley and specified that "he must be an inhabited householder within the district", making it clear he would be expected to work from home.
(Leicester Journal 22nd Feb 1867)

Generally if you find the registrar in the census, that will also probably give you the address he was working from.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  This is not something I have any particular knowledge of, but I seem to think that, maybe in the early days of registration, I have come across registrars in quite small villages. Was there perhaps a system of sub-sub-registrars, who would have known about local births and deaths?

[Jebber]

  This is not something I have any particular knowledge of, but I seem to think that, maybe in the early days of registration, I have come across registrars in quite small villages. Was there perhaps a system of sub-sub-registrars, who would have known about local births and deaths?

In the early days the onus was on the Registrar to go out and register the Births, it was about 1875 it changed and the onus was on the parents etc to go and register, with a fine imposed if they failed to do so.

[Davedrave]

The 1836 Birth and Death Registration Act required that every "Registrar & Deputy Registrar shall dwell within the district"  and also that they should have a notice or sign on the door of the office( which would often be their own house)  so people could find them.

People needed to know where to go to register, so you do often also find newspaper announcements of the location of the registrar's office.

In 1867 the Barrow on Soar Guardians advertised for a registrar for Rothley and specified that "he must be an inhabited householder within the district", making it clear he would be expected to work from home.
(Leicester Journal 22nd Feb 1867)

Generally if you find the registrar in the census, that will also probably give you the address he was working from.

Thanks, this is interesting. I’ve now located the Rothley registrar of my 1891 registrations in the census of that year and he was living in Main Street in Mountsorrel, so presumably he would have had a sign on his house and the horse omnibus driver could have stopped just outside.

Dave