Isaac COLLINS bap 1858 in Lydbrook -Prior Thread (General)

by jchardy , Sunday, April 05, 2009, 10:01 (5784 days ago) @ slowhands

Thanks slowhands: your speed is impressive. Although all the material you assembled in a few hours turns out to be in my files already, it has taken me several years of research to assemble those files! I was particularly interested in your statement that birth registration was not compulsory in England until 1874. I didn't know that. Was it also non-compulsory for marriages and deaths as well?
You're right that the Collins family was non-conformist. I have a card preserved from the funeral of James Collins, Isaac's father, who was crushed by a coal tram in the Trafalgar Colliery in 1870. It states that he was a "Primitive Methodist" and Sunday School teacher. Nevertheless, of his 10 children, the births of at least seven were officially registered and, of the six for whom I have both birth and baptismal information (the latter from Lydbrook), their baptisms all took place within 1-3 weeks of their births.
Thus, it seems very likely that Isaac Collins was born on 28 Dec 1857, exactly one year before the date he himself believed. Given his family's record with most of their other children, I had therefore been surprised not to find his birth formally registered for that date. Now that I realize that registration was not compulsory, I suppose that the demands of feeding multiple children on a miner's salary could well have pushed birth registration well down the list of family priorities. Presumably I should give up trying to find a birth record that may simply not exist.