Missing birth records

[Frank Toms]

Is it unusual for births not to be registered? On pretty much every other family group I've been looking at I've been able to find all of the births on GRO/FreeBMD, but with one family half of them seem to be missing, not even any similar births in that county with that surname.

I'll try baptism records but do I just chalk it down to missing records/the child not being registered at the time, or should it flag up a problem somewhere, e.g. wrong children, wrong relationships, wrong family?

[KGarrad]

Until 1874, it was the prerogative of the Registrar to chase up births.
From 1874 it was down to the parents.

[Frank Toms]

This is 1834-1850, Herefordshire. So it's not uncommon to have a someone missing from the main registry records?

[KGarrad]

Not common, but not uncommon either!
And Civil Registration only started on 1st July 1837 anyway.

[CaroleW]

Failure to register a birth only became a fineable offence in 1874 so many births went unregistered. There was a charge for registration and many families preferred to put food on the table instead

[IgorStrav]

And it seems that some people felt that a baptism was enough, and registration wasn't necessary.

[Galium]

There was (and is) no charge for registering a birth in England and Wales.  Parents would be issued with a short form certificate, which was free, and in earlier times would be all that was needed by most people.  There was a charge for the full certificate, which you didn't have to have.

[middyb]

Have you found other records just not the birth records? Or nothing at all? When I had this happen, I had the wrong surname name - it had changed after the birth was registered.