English GRO Digital Images - Not for Marriages?

[Wexflyer]

Am I correct that digital images are only available for births and deaths, but not for marriages?
Why is this?
Also, I wonder why is there a charge for English digital images, when BDM images are all freely available from the GRO in Ireland?

[Jebber]

Marriages have not been digitised.m no doubt they will be done eventually. The GRO have only recently digitised and made available more B&Ds.

Ireland is not part of the UK, what they chose to do is up to them. If the GRO was provide images for free it would mean another cost to the Brutish tax payer. The digital images are very cheap and only of use for our hobby, so I think it’s quite reasonable to pay for them.

[KGarrad]

Quoting from GRO FAQ's

Ordering via our online service

The following can be ordered through our GRO online ordering service -

    Certificates for birth, death, marriage, civil partnership and adoption events registered in England and Wales and for certain British Nationals, who were born, married, formed a civil partnership or died overseas.
    Commemorative marriage certificates for silver, ruby, golden and diamond wedding anniversaries.
    PDFs for historic digitised civil registration records held by GRO (birth entries from 1837 to up to 100 years ago and death entries from 1837 to 1957).
    Online View digital image for historic, digitised civil registration records held by GRO (birth entries from 1837 up to 100 years ago and death entries from 1837 - 1957).

[Wexflyer]

Ireland is not part of the UK, what they chose to do is up to them.

Did anyone assert otherwise?

If the [English] GRO was [to] provide images for free it would mean another cost to the Brutish (sic) tax payer.

Well, another GRO made a different set of calculations. Namely that the digitization/imaging program they performed was done for their own internal benefit, and that making said images freely available to the public was of benefit to the tax payer by increasing tourism, promoting historical links and local research.

[Wexflyer]

The digital images are very cheap and only of use for our hobby, so I think it’s quite reasonable to pay for them.

Whether it is reasonable or not to pay for them, it surely seems strange that marriages are omitted, given that they are arguably of more fundamental importance! In the absence of digital image versions, is the charge for marriage certs "reasonable", given that one may have to look at many marriage registrations before finding the correct one?

[Jebber]

Whether it is reasonable or not to pay for them, it surely seems strange that marriages are omitted, given that they are arguably of more fundamental importance! In the absence of digital image versions, is the charge for marriage certs "reasonable", given that one may have to look at many marriage registrations before finding the correct one?

I you want a definitive answer, I suggest you contact the GRO and ask them why digital images of marriages are not available. 

[Dundee]

They ran out of money.

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

Scroll down to Digitisation and Indexing (D&I) Project

Debra 

[Jon_ni]

Well, another GRO made a different set of calculations. Namely that the digitization/imaging program they performed was done for their own internal benefit, and that making said images freely available to the public was of benefit to the tax payer by increasing tourism, promoting historical links and local research.

Not disagreeing with that statement and decision by the Irish Office of the Ombudsman that resulted in the historic Irish images being made available digitally as public documents as they fell under the relm of NAI too & the 1986 National Archives Act - you and I certainly both take advantage, though it was rather forced on the IGRO rather than being their initiative.
https://www.ombudsman.ie/publications/reports/hidden-history-the-law-th/
However, the law differs elsewhere, and have to agree with the others that it is an exception rather than the norm with Scotland and N.I. both making nominal charges and other juristictions USA, Australia etc being both restrictive and bloody expensive.
Legislation re-wording 'entry' to 'entries' might also be needed before entire pages could be released, trivial but needs some MP to ask and then debate and pass etc.

it surely seems strange that marriages are omitted, given that they are arguably of more fundamental importance!

That is due to the failed DOVE project of 2006 which ran into delays resulting in cancellation of the contract with Siemens around 2008 before they digitised the marriage registers and has been on hold since 2010. There are many lengthy posts on here and repeats when the cheaper pdf's and images were introduced. [put Dove project in the search box, or Dove Eagle Magpie they go back to 2006 tender announcement then detail the disappointments] Guy Etchells who's FOI brought about the early 1911 and 1939 comments a number of times and the cancellation results in the cut off in birth 1937 and death images 1957 too. Your sentiment has been expressed before and no doubt will be again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Register_Office_for_England_and_Wales
https://news.siemens.co.uk/news/siemens-signs-contract-to-digitise-250-million-records-for-the-office-for-national-statistics
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/digitisation-project/digitisation-project

The August 2012 estimate of £25-30 million for the completion of the digitisation project does seem collossal. Progress since then has been the cheaper pdf's and new jpegs available to the public for research purposes but no actual new scanning of the missing years of entire books. Some of that cost estimate was for system interfaces and development of an online ordering site which now exist.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/digitisation-of-vital-events-project-costs/expenditure-on-the-digitisation-of-vital-events-project-of-civil-registration-records

Think we will get the missing Irish deaths 1864-1870 next year?

[california dreamin]

Am I correct that digital images are only available for births and deaths, but not for marriages?
Why is this?
Also, I wonder why is there a charge for English digital images, when BDM images are all freely available from the GRO in Ireland?

Depending on what year m/c you are looking for a lot of the Cof E (Anglican) parish marriage records are online - these are the same docs you would actually pay for if you were buying them from the GRO.  Therefore sometimes you get lucky.

CD