Copy birth certificates

[Lakeslass]

I have been told that I can buy birth certificates on line for �7. Does anyone know how?

[Buenchico]

Here's your answer:
http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificate/

Chris

[Lakeslass]

Thankyou,Chris.

[spudqueen]

You can also contact the relevant register office who are often quicker (and more efficient) than the above site. On Friday I contacted Rochdale register office by e-mail requesting three birth certificates (I'm attempting to trace my family tree), two of them were for women with the same name born within a year of each other so they e-mailed me back (within 2 hours) requesting parent information so they could send me the correct certificate. This saved me �7 as they could locate the correct certificate just by the fathers name.

[Baronvhb]

Be careful with this, when I got married my husband applied for his birth cert online, at a .gov address. They then contacted my husband 10 days before we needed the document and told him there was a delay, and that for a further �25 they could send it to him in time. He got in touch with registrar who said that they are always getting calls like this. A .gov address does not mean it is genuine! Good Luck!!

[CheekyChops]

I can vouch for the address given by Buenchico, I have used it many many times and it is genuine. You can always Google GRO at Southport and ring them to check if you are unsure.

The price for standard delivery is �7 if you have the GRO reference and �11.50 if you don't. Express delivery is �23.00 with the reference and �27.50 without.

You usually receive them in about a week although when that program was running on BBC2, 'Who Do You Think You Are', they were taking up to 6 weeks. They are taking a couple of weeks or more at the moment.

[Lakeslass]

Thankyou, everyone. I'll get on with it.

Eileen

[stoo_pid]

Incidentally, if you don't know the GRO reference, as long as they were born between 1837 & 1983, you should be able to find it here

[Lakeslass]

I can't understand this. I have seen the two names I am researching in the GRO index at the Record Office, but can't find either of them on this site. Am I missing something (again!)

Eileen

[dzug]

The freeBMD site makes no guarantees or even claims as to completeness. It's useful but there's a lot missing

[Lakeslass]

dzug. Thankyou. Here I am, in your debt again. I'll go through a different route.

Eileen

[stoo_pid]

The "First Name on Page" & "Last Name on Page" columns can be a little misleading. The GRO reference indices are scanned and the first & last name on the page are then entered on the database to provide a search reference. Sometimes though, it's hard to work out the exact spelling of the name from the original document so the person scanning it in may have guessed wrongly.

Also, quite often names were added to the end of the page of the original index by hand, which could also give a misleading "Last Name on Page" reference. For example 'Wilson' could be showing as the last typed name but then 'Wilkins' could be added by hand at the bottom of the page. This would mean that a search for 'Wilkinson' might not show up (because the database thinks that one page finishes on 'Wilkins' but the next page starts with 'Wilson').

Try a new search but with fewer letters (in this example try searching for the surname 'Wil'). Sometimes I've had to open up a page listing surnames close to the name I'm looking for & then navigate backwards or forwards using the page arrow buttons on the scanned image. (I should also add that there have been a couple of occasions where I've discovered that the relevant pages are unfortunately just missing, but I would say this is quite rare.)