Information provided by Tony Foster

The LancashireBMD website  enables the user to undertake a free search of the birth, marriage and death indexes held in the local register offices within the historic county of Lancashire. On finding the required entry it is then possible to print off an application form containing the office's local reference. By providing the office with their local reference number, rather than the General Register Office (GRO) reference, will enable them to quickly locate the certificate and return it much more speedily than the ONS at Southport. The website was established in 2003 by John Marsden of the Manchester & Lancashire FHS and our society, seeing the potential, quickly joined the project. We were then followed by other family history societies.

When I commenced my research in the mid 1970's the only way to locate a BMD certificate was to search the GRO indexes. These were originally located at Somerset House, London until they were moved to St Catherine's House in 1972 and in 1997 they were finally moved to the Family Records Centre. The indexes became more accessible once microform copies of them became available in local repositories. More recently the indexes have become available on the Internet, for example FreeBMD  or 1837 Online. However, the GRO indexes are based upon the copied certificates supplied on a quarterly bases from the Superintendent Registrars. Producing these copies were not without problems and there was no provision in the legislation to ensure accuracy of the copies. Even if any checks were undertaken it is unclear as to how effective it may have been. This can accounts for some of the errors in the indexes. 

There is no documentation that explains how the GRO carried out the indexing and sorting procedures in the 19th century. Nor is it generally known when various parts of the handwritten indexes were typed. The first step in indexing must have been for a clerk to copy out the names, together with the district name, volume and page numbers. These names would then have to be sorted into an alphabetical order based on the names. In the absence of effective mechanical means of sorting, it would have been logical to sort each volume separately and then merge the volumes into a total index as the final step. There would be no room in such a process for checking on an apparent error. 

The indexing procedure was a very labour intensive activity and therefore, it is little wonder that the Records Department of GRO had the largest staff. In 1840 the Records Department accounted for 29 staff out of a total of 50 and by 1921 this had increased to 114 out of a total of 172.

From the above description it will be clear that there were at least two copying processes and this was in addition to the copying already involved in making the quarterly returns. Little wonder there are errors in the GRO indexes

The Registration Service is fully aware of the errors in the GRO indexes and the types of errors have been highlighted by Mike Foster, who undertook a partial check at the General Register Office of a one per cent sample of the marriage material. The types of errors Mike identified were:

• Omitted quarterly returns could well be between 50,000 and 350,000 marriages based on finding from Essex and Somerset analysis.

• Marriages missed in the indexing could be at least 15,000

• Individual entries missing from the index could be around 20,000

• Variant/duplicate indexing could amount to 250,000 to 500,000 names.

• Errors in names as indexed are many and could rival the variant names.

• Names lost from the indexes through the typing process are certainly significant and impossible to quantify at this stage.

• Names lost from least the handwritten fiche and film of all three indexes are of the order of 25,000 through frames missed in their production.

• Errors of indexing (in volume/page numbers and district names), both in original indexing and through later typing, could range from 50,000 to 200,000.

• There are many other errors in great variety, witnesses indexed, fathers indexed instead of sons, brides indexed with new names.

• These estimates of errors may well be conservative. A million errors in the 1837/99 period are very probable."

(For more information see Michael Whitfield Foster, "A Comedy of Errors" or The Marriage Records of England and Wales 1837-1899. [Wellington, 1998]). 

Clearly all the sources that are based on the GRO indexes will be reproducing these errors. However, no matter how carefully the transcriptions are carried out and checking procedures are performed it will not overcome any problems between the original certificates in the local offices and copied at the GRO. 

By transcribing the local indexes and checking them against the original entries in registers held in each Register Office the Lancashire BMD project is able to overcome many of the above problems. In this way it is possible to produce a more reliable index. This has enabled many users to locate entries that do not appear in the GRO Indexes.

The following are a few examples of the errors within the GRO Indexes:

• Terry Gorman, of Scituate, Massachusetts, USA was unable to find the following using the GRO Index on the Ancestry website:

  • Marriage of Joseph Wilson to Margaret Shannon that took place in 1853

  • Birth of William Gorman that took place in Oldham in 1856 or that of his twin brother, Thomas

• Alan Gorry was unable to locate the 1861 marriage of James Tague to Margaret Armstrong that took place in Liverpool.

All these events were identified using the Lancashire BMD website.

The LancashireBMD website has other advantages over the GRO Indexes:

• The GRO Indexes states the registration district in which the event was registered. Due to boundary changes these registration districts many no longer exist. For examples the Registration Districts of Burnley & Pendle, Chorley, Fleetwood & Fylde, Hyndburn & Rossendale, Lancaster, Preston & South Ribble, Ribble Valley and West Lancashire are merged on 23rd May 2005 to form the Lancashire Registration Districts. All of the registers and indexes from these offices were moved to the new office. The Lancashire BMD website contains details of the offices were the certificates are currently located.

• As mentioned above the GRO Indexes only give the Registration District in which the event was registered. With marriages the Lancashire BMD website states the church in which the event took place. Prior to 1899 the registrar has to attend all nonconformist marriages and the website records these as civil marriages (for more information please refer to my next article). Births and deaths were registered in the sub-district in which the event took place and therefore the website contains this information.

The website gives details of all the updates and the type of coverage. It also contains information to help anyone new to family history research. The homepage also contains links to all the participating FHS's as well as the relevant Register Offices. There is also a link to the UKBMD page which will enable anyone with interests outside Lancashire to locate a relevant BMD website. Also by clicking on the "Register" link on the UKBMD homepage it is possible to subscribe to the UKBMD Mailing List. In this way it is possible to:

• Keep up-to-date with all the latest BMD update information. 
  · Discuss BMD related matters with like-minded genealogists. 

• Learn more about Births, Marriages and Deaths in the UK.
  Clearly the LancashireBMD website which is part of the UKBMD Project is a valuable resource for family historians which overcomes many of the problems associated with the GRO indexes.

Finally, we need to thank all the volunteers for their contributions, and continuing help, with the project. If you wish to get involved with transcribing or checking the records then please contact Tony Foster, 142 Cotswold Crescent, Bury BL8 1QP