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Ask the expert – workhouse birth

Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.

From Val Dunne:

‘The 1871 census shows my great-grandfather, aged 10, as a pauper, living in a house in Everton with his sister, aged 16, a servant, and the head of the house who was no relation. I am unable to find birth certificates for both brother and sister. If they were born in a workhouse, would they be on the national register of births?’

Stephen says:

‘Hi Val,

The short answer to your question is ‘yes’. The indexes to the civil registers of birth should be complete from July 1837 to date. A longer answer is ‘yes in theory, but not necessarily in practice’. Despite the threat of fines, registration was not made completely mandatory until 1875. Before that date, there was under-registration, due to a variety of factors: lack of awareness of the requirement, indifference, wariness of authority, non-compliance and transient family lifestyle, for example.

In addition to this, there is an inevitable small-percentage loss of actually recorded events due to clerical error, e.g., when copying an entry from the original district register of births into the quarterly copy prepared for the General Register Office, or accidentally turning two pages instead of one and missing out an entire spread of entries, or perhaps loss of entire registers in transit between the district level and the central office. There are also more contemporary hazards – for example, pages inadvertently not microfilmed and, therefore, not digitised for the online versions with which most of us are familiar these days, and entries that transcribers have mis-indexed (although this is unlikely to apply in your case, with your two missing entries).

Estimates of under-registration of birth vary, and perhaps can be exaggerated – the level will always be uncertain and unknowable. Even if the level never topped, say, 7%, this would still represent a lot of missing births (and potential genealogical brick walls!). In the very earliest years, to maybe the mid-1840s, one can see from comparing the civil registers with parish registers that some entries in the latter do not appear in the former. The reverse is also true of course, because the parish registers of the established church by their very nature exclude Catholics, Non-Conformists, Jews and others.

For certain districts, one sometimes also notices an unusually high number of entries indexed as ‘male’ or ‘female’ in the civil births (i.e. unnamed at registration) which bear names in the parish registers (i.e. because the child is baptised and christened). Don’t forget to consider these, just in case (they don’t necessarily denote an infant death).

Your great-grandfather would have been born circa 1860/61, by which time one would expect levels of under-recording to have fallen, although clearly not sufficiently for the state, as of course it acted to make registration compulsory from 1875. Moreover, one would definitely expect workhouse births to have been registered. Separate workhouse birth registers existed, at least for some institutions, and one would assume that these were copied to the central authorities in the normal way.

It is also worth remarking that while some families were born into poverty and never escaped it, others could fall upon hard times with alarming speed – in the mid-19th century there was no real equivalent of the modern welfare state. Just because your great-grandfather was a pauper in 1871, therefore, it doesn’t mean that he would have been born into poverty circa 1860/61.

There are other reasons why you might not be able to find his birth – you don’t give any specifics, so I can only speculate, but here are some possibilities: he may have been born outwith England & Wales (e.g., Ireland, or Isle of Man); he may have been registered under a variant of his name; he may have been born illegitimately and his birth registered under his mother’s name; or he may have been born legitimately, lost his father to premature death and taken the surname of a step-father after a remarriage of his mother; or he may have been informally fostered and taken the name of the family in whose care he was placed. Note that each of these possibilities could equally apply to the sister that you mentioned.’

If you’d like to send your question to Stephen, please register or opt to receive newsletters in ‘my account’. Stephen only has time to answer a couple of queries each month but if yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!

Ask the Expert – lost at sea

Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.

From Linda Durr:

‘I wonder if you could help me please. On Saturday April 17 1938 there appeared an article in the Lowestoft Journal about an engineer, Sidney Howe, who mysteriously disappeared while the fishing vessel was returning from the fishing grounds off Morecambe Bay Lightship in the West Coast. I can find no more information about this.

I was told that there would have had to have been an inquest when the vessel returned to Lowestoft. The ship was the SDT Ramsey BayLT1290 skipper and owner was Mr. D.N Randlesome, 88 Crown Street, Lowestoft.

I know that my grandma, mother and aunt were paid some insurance money from Lowestoft County Court but there is no date on the copy I received. Did they have to wait seven years before he was declared dead and the money paid out? Hoping you might be able to throw some light on this mystery.’

Stephen says:

‘Thanks for this interesting enquiry. I did a little background research on the internet and found out that Chief Engineer Sidney Howe disappeared from the trawler – presumed lost overboard and drowned – on 14 April 1937. If the Lowestoft Journal article is from April the following year 1938, as per your email, presumably it was published after the inquest.

In any event, there would be two possibilities for a peacetime death at sea in British waters. Some deaths can be expected to have been registered at the port at which the vessel docked upon its return to shore (in this case, Lowestoft).

The majority, however, should appear in the series of General Register Office death indexes known as marine deaths. I searched these, and sure enough the death of a Sidney G Howe is shown in the GRO marine death indexes for 1936/37, aged 46, on the “Ramsay Bay”. You can, therefore, apply for a copy of the death certificate which, on the face of it, would seem to have been issued in 1937 (although it is possible that the index is one of GRO’s periodic cumulative revisions including later entries alongside contemporary ones).

In any case, if you apply for the death certificate – which you can do online at http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates – the certificate will give the date of death and the date of registration.

The notion that seven years had to pass comes from the so-called Benjamin Order, used in probate matters, which is a presumption of death after seven years (its name comes from a 1902 court case which set the precedent). I doubt that seven years had to elapse before life insurance monies were paid out in this particular instance – as soon as the death certificate was issued, a claim should have been feasible. In any event, the date of registration of death given in the death certificate will give you the very earliest date that a claim could have been made.

You can search the marine deaths on findmypast.co.uk’

If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!

Olympics baby found in birth records

The London 2012 Olympics are now exactly one year away, with the opening ceremony taking place on 27th July 2012. In celebration of this, we’ve had a look through our birth records and have found one British child born with the surname Olympics.

Michael Olympics was born – quite fittingly – in Athens, Greece. Athens was the host of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

Michael Olympics' birth record - please click to see full page

Although he wasn’t born in the UK, Michael’s birth is listed because it was registered with the British Consul. The General Register Office index of British nationals born overseas 1818 – 2005 is available at findmypast.co.uk and can be searched at the same time as births registered in England and Wales 1837 – 2006.

Ask the Expert – missing family

Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.

From Helen Conway-Blake in Denmark:

‘I hope you can help. My husband’s mother was born around 1907. She died on 8 April 1951 and we have her death certificate, which says that she was 44 when she died.

Her name was Vera Nellie May Slater. When she died, she was married to William George Udall – they got married in 1939. Vera died at 31 Copse Hill, Wimbledon; we think this is a hospital. My husband was only 10 years old when she died and he never knew where she was buried.

Vera had two sisters. Peggy (probably Margaret) Slater and Sissy (we don’t know her real name). Sissy married a Lovegrove and they had a daughter. We don’t know if she is still alive.

We cannot find my husband’s mother’s family anywhere. We cannot find what town/city his mother was born in and can find nothing about her sisters or parents. If you can help us we would be most grateful.’

Stephen says:

‘Thanks for your enquiry. It’s hard to know what to suggest without knowing what you have tried already. The following suggestion is what I would do were I in your shoes, starting from scratch.

Firstly, if you do not have it already, you should purchase a copy of the 1939 marriage certificate. You can do this online at the General Register Office website. The statutory fee is £9.25 at present. The purpose of getting the marriage certificate is to a) find out Vera’s age at marriage in case this suggests a different year of birth to that calculated from the recorded age at death; b) find out the name of her father and his occupation; and c) see if any of the witnesses to the marriage are the known siblings or other family.

I have looked up the marriage entry in the marriage indexes on findmypast.co.uk and her name at marriage was Vera May Slater (without Nellie as a middle name). The only individual of this name of the right era in the birth indexes for England & Wales is one born in 1904 in West Ham registration district. This, however, may not be correct (the birth is earlier than you are expecting) and it is possible that she was born as plain Vera or plain May or even as ‘female’, i.e., unnamed at registration of birth. This is not unusual and is not simply synonymous with death in early infancy.

Once you have the certificate, and assuming that it names Vera’s father and confirms that she was born circa 1906/07 or otherwise before 1911, you should search the 1911 census of England & Wales. First, look for her in combination with her father using the advanced person search. If you cannot find her with him, then try looking for him alone using as base information a year of birth at least 16 years before Vera’s and his occupation as per the marriage certificate of Vera.

Should you find Vera on the 1911 census, which will give her place of birth, you can then search for her birth in the birth indexes for England & Wales (or elsewhere if the census suggests she was born outside England). From there you can proceed with systematic step-by-step research.

As mentioned above, I do not know what you have done to date. It is likely, however, that the negative outcome of all your searches suggests a perhaps less than straightforward family structure. Vera and her sisters may have been born under a different last name, for example, before their mother married a Mr Slater, i.e., he could be their step-father. This would be one possible explanation why you cannot find records under the name Slater. Or the two known sisters could be half-sisters with a different maiden last name. Or Mr Slater could have been the foster parent of the three girls. Or they could have been born in Scotland or elsewhere beyond England & Wales. So there are various permutations to consider. The best way forward in problematic cases like this will almost invariably be through the kind of methodical systematic approach sketched out earlier.’

If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!

Ask the Expert – mystery military marriages

Our resident military expert Paul Nixon, pictured below, answers your queries.

From Mary Doubleday:

‘I have two military marriages I am having trouble finding and wonder if you can help me.

1. My great grandparents:

Col. Sgt. John Mallon was born in 1823 in Loughall, Charlemont, Armagh. His regt. no. was 1942, 34th (Border Regt.). He enlisted in 1841 in Preston and died on 5 January 1858 at Cawnpore Hospital. His wife’s name was Mary, last name unknown. She was born in Charlemont, Armagh. They had two children born overseas: Ellen was born on 29 June 1849 in Gibraltar. She was baptised in Garrison church. Margaret was born in 1851 in Grenada, W.I.

2. My grandmother’s first marriage:

Ellen Mallon was born in 1849 in Gibraltar to a man with the last name Burgess, whose first name was probably William. He was either in the Connaught Rangers or the Royal Artillery. He is not my grandfather. He died before 1889.

There are connections to Navan, Co. Meath, Portsmouth and Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight. This is a bit vague but I would value any pointers.’

Paul says:

‘The only John Mallon I could find was a John Mallon who married in Plymouth in the June quarter of 1847. Your John Mallon probably enlisted with the 34th Regiment of Foot in September 1841, and certainly between 11 August and 5 October that year. I checked to see where the Border Regt. was between 1841 and 1858 and can report as follows:

1842 – England
1845 – Ionian Islands
1848 – West Indies
1854 – Ionian Islands
1855 – Crimea
1856 – England
1857 – India

Margaret’s birth in the West Indies in 1851 certainly ties in with the regiment’s station at the time, although Ellen’s birth in 1849 does not. It would seem probable that Mary Mallon stayed behind in Gibraltar when the 34th moved to the West Indies, joining her husband later on. None of this helps you with finding a marriage I’m afraid.

One source you might try is the General Register Office. There is a register of army registers and I see that marriages for the 34th Regiment of Foot between 1838 and 1878 are covered in Press Number 1081.

I had a similar lack of success with Ellen Mallon’s marriage but again I would point you towards the GRO. Connaught Rangers marriages should be noted in Press Number 1390, while Royal Artillery marriages cover a huge range of Press Numbers. I’d suggest you try the Connaught Rangers first and then, if you don’t find Ellen, ask the GRO for their advice on searching the Royal Artillery marriages.’

If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!

New charges for ordering certificates

The General Register Office has just introduced new charges for ordering birth, marriage and death certificates which will take effect from Tuesday 6th April 2010. For more information view the GRO’s press release.

Ask the expert – lost in World War One

Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘My great uncle Tommy Venables was a private in the Cheshire regiment in the First World War. It was stated that he was ‘killed at home’ in November 1916, but no explanation is given, although we believe he drowned. Where can we go to clarify what happened?’ Irene Hartless

Steve says: “Soldiers Died in the Great War shows that Private Thomas Venables died at “Home”. Where the theatre of war is given as “Home”, this usually means that the soldier died either while serving within the UK (for example, in a reserve battalion or in a home service garrison), or else died back in UK of wounds sustained overseas without having been discharged from the army.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website shows that he was buried in Toxteth Park Cemetery. If you have not already visited the memorial there, it is worth doing so in case a headstone gives more detail: however, it has to be said that this is unlikely unless the family met the cost (CWGC headstones are purposely standardised in design). The simplest way to find out the cause of death for a “Home” theatre of war casualty is to purchase a copy of the death certificate using the usual General Register Office (GRO) civil death indexes. Private Venables’ death appears to have been registered in the West Derby district in the March quarter of 1917. This delay (when registration would have been expected in the December quarter of 1916) may indicate that there was an inquest, which would be consistent with accidental death, such as drowning, which would require a coroner’s report. You can buy a copy of the death certificate for £7 online from the GRO’s website http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates or, if you live in Merseyside, you could visit in person the register office, which is located in Liverpool’s Cotton Exchange. The certificate may point you to a coroner’s report (if there was one: try Merseyside Record Office) and that, together with local newspapers, may fill in the background.”

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