hitting a brick wall

[cazzz1975]

I am struggling to find a birth of an ancestor, I found their death certificate which gives their date of birth, however I cannot find any record of their birth on BMD and oversea's births, is there any other ways I could find it out?

I have checked a 2 year period either side of the birth date just to make sure that I have covered it, no joy!

[CheekyChops]

When are we talking about? Many births pre 1875 weren't registered.

Could they have been born/registered before their parents married and be registered under the mother's maiden name?

[cazzz1975]

before 1875? I thought registered births were iffy before 1837? anyway no this is fairly modern, he was supposedly born in 1918 according to his death certificate, strangely I cannot find it in the indexes, I have checked the international births as well to no avail :S

[dot.hawkes]

it was the responsibility o the parent or parents to register a birth before 1875, and people didn't use the systen consistent;y, after 1875 it was the responsibility of the registrar.
anyway, you need to actually contact the register office that you think would cover the birth registration, sometimes errors and omissions were made with the national index.
If no luck with that, try looking for a siblings registration.
also. if his mum was not married to his dad, she could not register him in his dad's name, only her maiden name. have you checked under that name?

[spudqueen]

I'd check more than 2 years. My dad had an aunt who had a 90th birthday party. When she died a couple of years later we then discovered that she would only have been 80 when she had her 90th birthday party! People didn't always tell the truth about their ages (in the last couple of days I've been looking at one family on the census, and one bloke is age 38, the next census 48 then the next one 56! And as CheekyChops and Dot have said, not everyone was registered. Even though the registers came in in 1837 there was no penalty for not registering a birth. It was only when fines were brought in that most peoples birth was registered.