The Nosey Genealogist

I’ve been doing a bit of genealogical research recently using the BMD indexes of vital records from the GRO. For any new Family Historians reading this, the following is something I’ve distilled out of a super course offered by Pharos Tutors online.

Until July 1837 there was not a “nationwide” system for recording Births Marriages and Deaths. What England and Wales did have was a parish register system administered by the Church of England, which had been in operation since 1538.

The state, however, increasingly wanted to be able to count its citizens and produce some sort of meaningful statistics with a view to finding out if the population of the country was going up over time. Another worry, for the authorities, was the marriage law that had become unsatisfactory in the 18th century because of the number of non-conformists worshipping outside of the established church. While Jews and Quakers kept records they were, of course, outside of the system and yet other religious groups were not keeping any form of register at all. So, by 1832, when parliamentary and constitutional reforms were passed and followed by reform of the poor law system in 1843, the state could now do something about the situation.

Thus, in 1836, two Acts of Parliament were passed…

1. The Marriage Act - which amended existing legislation for marriage procedures and brought in the addition of the registry office marriage which allowed non conformist to marry in a civil ceremony. Sometimes you will see it referred to as the “Dissenters Marriage Bill”
2. Act for Registering Births Marriages & Deaths in England - which repealed previous legislation that regulated parish and other registers.

By the summer of 1837, the first published indexes were produced with the September quarter index. It included all the births, marriages and deaths for July, August and September of the year being sent in to the General Register Office by the various Superintendent Registrars who, in turn, had collated the returns from local registrars. The Superintendent Registrar’s districts were based on those of the old Poor Law Unions and this means that some of them would be based on districts that may stray over county borders and thus could be a cause of confusion for today’s genealogical researcher!

So beware when looking for that elusive ancestor that should have been born, married or died in one county only to find that they appear in the registers of a town in the neighbouring one!