Original certificates (General)

by Celia61, Monday, November 30, 2009, 10:42 (5547 days ago) @ julie cleaver

Hi again, Julie et al
I hope this will clarify the certificate queries.

The original completed registers for entries of births and deaths for a district are held by the local Register Office in the custody of the Superintendent Registrar along with the original civil marriage registers for their district plus completed registers from churches within the district. The Registrars for the district hold the registers in current use, which are passed to the SR one month after they are completed.

Every quarter, ending 31st March, 30th June, 30th September and 31st December of each year, the Registrars are required by statute to send returns of the births deaths and marriages they have recorded during this period to the General Register Office, along with similar marriage returns from clergy, authorized persons for other denominations, Secretaries of synagogues, and Quakers. A good proportion of these were (and from the churches, still are) handwritten or typed, as this was their only method of copying.

All certificates, whether from the local Register Office (even those issued at the time of the event), GRO, or the local church are certified copies of either the original Register or the “Quarterly copy” sent to GRO, and will bear the prescribed words “Certified to be a true copy….” whichever source it comes from. Copies produced by GRO are taken from photographic film of the Quarterly copy returns.

There are different methods of reproducing register entries onto the certificates depending on the facilities available locally and whether or not the entries will produce a photographic copy.

Computerisation of birth, death, and civil partnership registrations in recent years has made a difference to the method of sending Quarterly copies to GRO, but the statutory Quarterly copy process still stands.
Lots more I could write, but this is getting rather long!

Cheers, Celia