When were birth, death or marriage certificates first introduced in the UK?
Civil registration was introduced in England and Wales on 1 July 1837. Many people objected to this intrusion of bureaucracy into their lives or just didn’t bother to register the births of their children so many births are missing from the indexes in the early years. In 1875 it became a requirement to register a birth within six weeks so theoretically all births should be included in the indexes after this time, though some are still missing and sometimes parents falsified the date of birth if the six week period had passed. The marriage and death indexes are more complete. All marriages should be included because copies of marriage certificates were required to be sent quarterly to the Registrar’s Office but it has been proved that some are missing. This site has more information about the errors and omissions in the indexes:- http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mikefos… If you want to consult the indexes they have
