Freebmd - the "count" option for marriages...

[bernard_lewis]

I'm researching Swansea in the Second World War and have used Freebmd to count the number of births and deaths registered in the Swansea District during 1939-45. That seemed simple - I just entered the parameters "Swansea" and "Glamorgan" for each year's births or deaths and it produced a result.

I'm not so sure about marriage registrations. Obviously, each birth or death involves only one person but a marriage involves two persons.

So, if I count e.g. for marriages on Freebmd in Swansea during 1942, does the number returned count the records of Miss Black and Mr White getting hitched as one marriage or two? I can search Freebmd for their marriage by either of their names so am I double counting when using the count function?

The average number of weddings in the Swansea district between 1935-38 (from Freebmd) was 2,880 per year (if I've got my sums right) on a population of about 166,000. So just under 6,000 out of 166,000 getting married which seems a bit high to me once you discount the too young etc.

I can't find a Freebmd email address to ask them.

Does anyone have any ideas, please? I'm assuming there aren't any GRO records at this level of detail online? And I don't suppose my local registration office would help?

Cheers!

Bernard

[BumbleB]

As each marriage on FreeBMD is transcribed twice - for bride's surname and groom's surname - then I think you should divide your total number by 2.

AND if the bride has been married previously then there could be more entries.

[bernard_lewis]

Thanks for the reply and message.  It is a grey area...

Bernard

[BumbleB]

Not quite sure why you think it is a "grey" area.  FreeBMD (and I am a transcriber, by the way) merely  transcribes the indexes for Births, marriages and deaths issued by GRO.

"All Births, Marriages and Deaths are recorded in Registers, typically with 4 or 8 entries per page. These Registers are grouped into Volumes which are identified by a number, possibly followed by a single letter. Early registers were identified by Roman Numerals (e.g. XII) and later ones by Arabic numerals (e.g. 12) but in FreeBMD we only use Arabic numberals for searching (so volume 12 would find volume XII).

The Registers themselves are held by the General Register Office (GRO) and under current legislation only officials of the GRO are allowed to access them. The GRO will provide a certified copy of an entry in the Registers (a certificate) - see here for further information.

The GRO has created an index to the Registers called the GRO Index and FreeBMD is an online transcription of this index that can be searched. A particular page in a register is uniquely identified in the GRO Index by

The type (or Event) of the registration (Births, Marriages or Deaths)
The quarter and year of the registration
The volume identifier
The page identifier"

[AntonyMMM]

You can't assume that an entry in any of the BMD indexes relates to a single, unique, event.

As noted, a marriage will appear in the index (at least) twice, under the surname of each party, so dividing by two should give a reasonable figure - but with some inaccuracy to allow for parties recorded under multiple names.

A birth can be indexed more than once if the parents are both named and unmarried, or if either parent is recorded with multiple names e.g. "Smith otherwise Jones", corrections and re-registrations can also generate additional index entries for one event. Likewise a death will be indexed under any/all surnames shown for the deceased - again it isn't uncommon to have "otherwise" or "formerly" names included on the register and each will generate an index entry.

The counts can only ever be an approximate measure.

[bernard_lewis]

Thanks for the info, very helpful!

Bernard

[bernard_lewis]

Not quite sure why you think it is a "grey" area. 

To clarify:

For my research purposes, what I'd really like to be able to say (with a good degree of accuracy) is that during YYYY there were, e.g., xxx births registered in Swansea. The same for deaths and marriages. It looks like using Freebmd or the GRO index as a "count" option will not give me an accurate figure due to the reasons you and Anthony have mentioned. That's life...

Thinking that births and deaths were "simple", one register entry events, (I now know they are not always so) I was planning on using Freebmd count results for Bs and Ds. I've actually sent a FOI request for the number of marriages registered in Swansea for the war years though where that will get me, I don't know. I'm not after names etc just a number.

Maybe naively I thought that if the first marriage register entry for a particular year was numbered e.g. 345 and the last one was 999, the Registrar's staff could easily work out the annual figure - and the annual figure might, in any event, already be included in an old annual report on a dusty shelf... and easily looked up. I'd be surprised if the local office didn't keep a summary of the number of events registered over the years. But you never know...(well, I don't, anyway...)

I may well have to just omit any detailed reference to the B-M-D figures in what I write. A shame, but it's only a couple of paragraphs (and a table) among 80,000 words.

Thanks for the advice!

Bernard

[AntonyMMM]

A local office probably could give you a reasonable figure for the information you want by looking at the old registers and seeing how many were used, but is isn't something you can do really on-line yourself with total accuracy. Births and Deaths would be far more straightforward than marriages (where there are numerous registers in use, in churches and chapels etc.)

A nicely worded letter to the Supt Registrar explaining your research may get a helpful response

Otherwise, the stats you need  may be included in reports submitted to the Registrar General from the districts - they would be held at The National Archives in the RG series - but again, not something you can look at on-line, it would need a visit and some digging through the records.

[bernard_lewis]

Thanks Anthony.

I'm hoping my FOI request will be successful and I'll take it on from there...

Bernard