BMD Index - Births, Marriages and Deaths

Civil Registration was introduced in 1837 to record Births, Marriages and Deaths, which previously hadn't been centrally registered. Like the census, its introduction had much to do with monitoring the growth and age profile of the country's population.

The General Registry Office was in charge of collecting and collating this data and they created quarterly indexes to Birth, Marriage and Death registrations. Registration certificates are a key resource in family history research, you cannot view the original register entries, but you can purchase copies of the certificates. The GRO indexes are used to locate the references necessary to order certificates, and these can now be found at the Family Records Centre.

The GRO's indexes are sometimes still called the St Catherine's Indexes, after the building they lived in for many years, and it's not long ago that you would have to spend hours winding rolls of microfilm or navigating fiche, to search just a few years looking for a single entry.

Commencing with the introduction of Civil Registration in 1837 and running up to the present day, the indexes enable us to locate the dates of family events and purchase the certificates necessary to carry out our research. Now the BMD indexes are fully searchable online, you can achieve in a day what may have taken you months or even years previously. Now that the GRO provide online certificate ordering, the whole process can be carried out quickly, without leaving your home. The only delay to your research is the few days waiting for the post to arrive.

What they provide

Although the certificates themselves provide a wealth of knowledge, the indexes provide very little, just an Event, Name, Year, Quarter and Page number. You may also find the reported age at death, the surname of the spouse or a mother's maiden name on later entries.

Civil Registration was introduced in 1837, previously the only records were the parish records kept by the church. Civil Registrations are a little patchy in the early years, especially if you are looking at births because initially registration was voluntary.

Why buy certificates?

Some researchers are content with just finding the reference in the GRO indexes, recording the "M Y Ancestor" was born in the 3rd quarter of 1897, married the 1st quarter 1932 ...etc. Purchasing certificates can be expensive if you buy them all, but although you may not wish to purchase them for every child for example, you should purchase at least a representative sample for each family, as well as those purchased to try and solve particular problems.

Certificates contain a wealth of extra information related to each event, the index reference only provides an approximate date, and even with unusual names you can never be certain. For instance birth certificates can show how a family moved around a town, possibly indicating the family's wealth and social status at the time. A marriage certificate can provide both spouse's father's names and occupations as well as the actual place and date of the marriage, plus their ages and addresses at the time of marriage.

Finding certificate references

The full reference necessary to purchase a certificate consists of the Registration District; Year; Quarter; Volume number and the Page number. These references apply only when you order certificates from the GRO, if you apply at the relevant local office, the registrar there will have a different system. They can make use of the year and quarter information you supply, but will have to look up the entry in their own index. You will also need to know the name of the church in the case of a marriage, as they tend to be kept separately. In a large town or city with many churches this can be a problem, which can be overcome by ordering the certificate direct from the GRO whose indexes are amalgamated.

1837 to 1983 data

The BMDindex section of TheGenealogist offers complete coverage of the full period of civil registration 1837-1983 using an indexed image service. The full content of the pages is not indexed, you have to view the digitised images of the original index pages and extract the information from those yourself.

To locate the correct page for you to search, the page images are indexed by the name range that each page contains. As the indexing doesn't indicate whether or not the name actually appears on that particular page, only that it falls within its name range, this means that you will generally have to view 4 pages, one per quarter, to search for a single event within a one year period.

Make sure that you note all the details - Year; Quarter; District, Volume and Page so that you can order a certificate.

Early indexes contain just the name and reference, but extra information was later added to the indexes to help locate the correct individual. The Age at Death was included in the Death indexes from 1866 and from 1912 the Surname of the Spouse was added to the Marriages and the Maiden name of the Mother to Births.

View a sample death index image
(.pdf format; Adobe Reader required)

Births and Deaths 1984 onwards, Marriages 1980 onwards

From 1984 the General Register Office computerised their indexes, allowing them to be fully searchable for individual entries.

We have indexed 1980 to 1983 marriages and added these to the available records for searching.

TheGenealogist offers a Simple Search form, which allows you to search by a single forename and surname, or an Advanced Search in which a range of parameters can be included, such as initials, other forenames, mother's maiden name or spouse's surname. To find the full reference required to purchase a certificate, click the link next to the entry in the search results.

Additional features

SmartSearch

BMDindex has utilised these fully searchable records to offer some innovative features, utilising the fact that the data can be easily interrogated in different ways. Several searches based on the results you have already located can be performed with just one click, for instance a reverse search on a marriage index entry can provide the first name for a spouse, not just the surname.

The SmartSearch also enables you to find all the children registered to the same parents, quickly finding all the family.

From the Age at Death it can automatically list the birth index pages likely to contain their birth. Of course this only works with entries for a males or spinsters, and reported ages are often inaccurate, but the feature can save you time and effort.

Surname Mapping

Originally a feature of their online 2% 1851 census subscription, the Surname Distribution Mapping tool has also been applied to the BMD data. This enables you to map surname densities onto a county map of England and Wales, often with interesting results. This is colour coded, according to the numbers of events present, providing a visual display of surname registration densities across the counties for different periods in time. As well as the visual representation, a table provides an accurate count for each county.

View surname mapping information

Ordering certificates

Copy Birth, Marriage or Death certificates for England or Wales can be ordered online direct from the GRO website: www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificate

Simply follow the instructions on the GRO website, providing the necessary information and the GRO Index reference you have found in the indexes. This is the year, quarter and district, usually accompanied by a volume number and page reference, but later records may simply have an Entry number. The GRO require you to supply more information in the application for events from the last 50 years.

Follow the other links to find out more: