General Register Office for England and Wales

Prior to the creation of the General Register Office (GRO) in 1837, there was no national system of civil registration in England and Wales. Baptisms, marriages and burials were recorded in parish registers maintained by Church of England (Anglican) clergy. However, with the great increase in nonconformity and the gradual relaxation of the laws against Catholics and other dissenters from the late 17th century, more and more baptisms, marriages and burials were going unrecorded in the registers of the Anglican Church.

The increasingly poor state of English parish registration led to numerous attempts to shore up the system in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The Marriage Act of 1753 attempted to prevent 'clandestine' marriages by imposing a standard form of entry for marriages, which had to be signed by both parties to the marriage and by witnesses. Additionally, except in the case of Jews and Quakers, legal marriages had to be carried out according to the rites of the Church of England. Sir George Rose's Parochial Registers Act of 1812 laid down that all events had to be entered on standard entries in bound volumes. It also declared that the church registers of Nonconformists were not admissible in court as evidence of births, marriages and deaths. Only those maintained by the clergy of the Church of England could be presented in court as legal documents, and this caused considerable hardship for Nonconformists. A number of proposals were presented to Parliament to set up centralised registries for recording vital events in the 1820s but none came to fruition.[1]

Eventually, increasing concern that the poor registration of baptisms, marriages and burials undermined property rights, by making it difficult to establish lines of descent, coupled with the complaints of Nonconformists, led to the establishment in 1833 of a parliamentary Select Committee on Parochial Registration. This took evidence on the state of the parochial system of registration, and made proposals that were eventually incorporated into the 1836 Registration and Marriage Acts. In addition, the government wanted to survey matters such as infant mortality, fertility and literacy to bring about improvements in health and social welfare. The medical establishment advocated this because a rapidly growing population in the northern industrial towns – caused by the Industrial Revolution – had created severe overcrowding, and the links between poor living conditions and short life expectancy were now known.

The answer was the establishment of a civil registration system. It was hoped that improved registration of vital events would protect property rights through the more accurate recording of lines of descent. Civil registration would also remove the need for Nonconformists to rely upon the Church of England for registration, and provide medical data for research.[2] As a result, in 1836, legislation was passed that ordered the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales. This took effect from 1 July 1837. A General Register Office was set up in London and the office of Registrar General was established.

England and Wales were divided into 619 registration districts (623 from 1851), each under the supervision of a superintendent registrar. The districts were based on the recently introduced poor law unions. The registration districts were further divided into sub-districts (there could be two or more), each under the charge of registrars who were appointed locally.

Although the GRO was not specifically established to undertake statistical research, the early Registrar Generals, Thomas Henry Lister (1836–42) and George Graham (1842–79), built up a Statistical Department to compile medical, public health and actuarial statistics. Much of this work was undertaken in the early to mid-Victorian period by William Farr, the GRO's Superintendent of Statistics. Under these men the Annual reports of the Registrar General became a vehicle for administrative and social reform. In 1840 the GRO also took over responsibility for the decennial census of England and Wales.[2]

In 1871, the GRO came under the supervision of the Local Government Board. During the First World War the GRO was responsible for co-ordinating National Registration, which underpinned recruitment to the armed forces, the movement of workers into the munitions industries, and rationing. National Registration was not, however, continued after the war and the GRO was absorbed into the Ministry of Health in 1919.[2]

In 1970 the GRO became part of the newly created Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS), with the Registrar General in overall charge. Until then it had had several statistical functions, including the conduct of population censuses and the production of annual population estimates; all these were moved elsewhere within the new organisation. The GRO then became a division within OPCS, headed by a Deputy Registrar General. Then in 1996 the OPCS, and therefore the GRO, became part of the newly created Office for National Statistics, and the office of Registrar General was merged with that of Head of the Government Statistical Service.

On 1 April 2008, the General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO) became a subsidiary of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), then an executive agency of the Home Office. The decision to make the transfer of GRO to IPS was finalised following the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2007. The move followed changes to make Office for National Statistics (ONS) more independent of the British Government, which included relinquishing the registration role.

In 2013, IPS was renamed HM Passport Office, while remaining an agency of the Home Office.

From its beginnings in 1836, the General Register Office was based within the North Wing of Somerset House in London.[3] There it remained until 1970 when it moved within London to St Catherine's House on Kingsway. For a short time after the move the death records were stored at Alexandra House, until room was found for all the records at St Catherine's House. In 1997 the GRO staff were moved to Southport, Merseyside while public access to the records and indexes was made available at a new Family Records Centre (FRC) in Clerkenwell. This facility was jointly operated by the National Archives so that public access to census returns was also available at the same location. The FRC was closed in 2008, in response to steadily decreasing visitor numbers caused by the increased online availability of the records.

The GRO is now located at Smedley Hydro in Southport,[4] a former hydropathic hotel that has been converted into offices for the GRO and the NHS Information Centre, formerly the NHS Central Register.[5]

In the early days of the system, it was up to each local registrar to find out what births, marriages and deaths had taken place in his sub-district. It has therefore been estimated that only about 50–60% of births, both legitimate and illegitimate, were registered as parents were not legally obliged to inform the registrar. It has been estimated that in some parts of England up to 15% of births were not registered between 1837 and 1875.[6] As a result of the Births and Deaths Act 1874, registration was made compulsory from 1875 and the onus was now on parents to inform the registrar when they had a child and penalties were imposed on those who failed to register. Births had to be registered within 42 days at the district or sub-district office, usually by the mother or father. If more days had elapsed but it was less than three months since the birth, the superintendent registrar had to be present and if between three months and a year, the registration could only be authorised by the Registrar General.

Until 1926, there were no registrations at all of still born children. For illegitimate children, the original 1836 legislation provided that "it shall not be necessary to register the name of any father of a bastard child." From 1850, instructions to registrars were clarified to state that, "No putative father is allowed to sign an entry in the character of 'Father'." However, the law was changed again 1875 to allow a father of an illegitimate child to record his name on his child's birth certificate if he attended the register office with the mother. In 1953 a child's father could also be recorded on the birth certificate, if not married to the mother, without being physically present to sign the register.

Clergy of the established Church of England are registrars for marriage. In each parish church two identical registers of marriages are kept and when they are complete, one is sent to the superintendent registrar. In the meantime, every three months it is required that a return certified by a clergy person detailing the marriages that had taken place, or else that no marriages had taken place, in the preceding three months, be submitted directly to the superintendent registrar.

The Marriage Act 1836 also permitted marriages by licence to take place in approved churches, chapels and nonconformist meeting houses, other than those of the Church of England. Marriages were only legally binding if they were notified to the superintendent registrar by the officiating minister so in effect, this required the presence of a local registration officer as the authorising person. When a nonconformist minister or other religious official, such as a rabbi, performed the ceremony it was necessary for the local registrar or his assistant to be present so that the marriage was legal. This legislation was not repealed until 1898, after which date, nonconformist ministers and other religious leaders could take on the role of notifying official, if so appointed, and on the condition that their premises were licensed for the solemnising of marriage. The civil authorities, i.e. the local registrar, could also perform marriage by certificate in a register office. Changes in marriage laws since 1836 have also affected how marriages are registered, for example, civil partnerships for same-sex couples were introduced by the British Government in 2004 and the GRO records these ceremonies through its civil registration system.

A death was to be registered by someone who had been present at the death or during the final illness. If that wasn't possible, it could be registered by the owner of the building the person died in, or if the dead person was the owner, by some other occupier of the building. There were more complicated arrangements for eventualities such as unidentified bodies being found, and cases where there was a coroner's inquest. A death was supposed to be registered within eight days.[7]

Since there wasn't necessarily a unique person clearly responsible for registering a death, in order to make sure deaths were registered, clergymen were made responsible for checking the death certificate before performing any funeral or burial service. However, they were given some leeway in case the death hadn't been registered yet, and could go ahead with the service provided they notified the registrar themselves within seven days. If they failed to do so they were liable for a ten-pound fine.[8] This was inadequate to guarantee all deaths were registered, since in principle a body could be buried without a religious service, and those who hadn't been baptized (mostly young children) didn't qualify for Christian burial.

From 1845 the cause of death had to be certified by a doctor before registration. A death would normally be registered in the district in which it occurred. Once a death has been registered, the registrar would normally issue a Certificate for Burial or Cremation, unless the death were being investigated by the coroner or there were an inquest. This certificate would give permission for the body to be buried or for an application for cremation to be made.

The Births and Deaths Act 1874 tried to ensure all deaths were registered, by placing a duty on the persons who were supposed to register the death to do so. No specific penalty was imposed if they failed to do it, but if the registrar became aware of any deaths that hadn't been registered within the past year, then the registrar had a duty and was empowered to summon the negligent parties to the register office to get it registered. If the death had occurred more than a year previously, it wasn't to be registered late without special permission.[9]

A different registration system operates today in other parts of the United Kingdom.

In addition to the registers already mentioned, the GRO has charge of a number of other records in its Overseas Section. These indexes can be searched online at pay-per-view family history websites and at the National Archives. They generally contain similar information to the main GRO indexes and registers. The Regimental Registers, Chaplains Returns, Consular Returns, Army Births, Marriages and Deaths and the War Deaths are some of the most significant. The civil registration records that pertain to British people in India and countries in the Far East, formerly part of the British Empire, are found in the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library.