Family Historian User Group

Just wondering what others do in respect of the Registration District, etc., on a Birth / Marriage / Death GRO Index record - do you consider this to also be the Place of Birth, etc, or do you leave the Place in the Birth fact blank on FH. From what I have read, the vast majority of BMD's are registered "locally" and therefore it is probably (?) fairly safe to assume that the Registration District is the locale of birth (or M or D).

Until now I have always ignored the Registration District (in terms of the Birth, etc., fact Place) but I am just wondering if I should perhaps treat it as the "real" Place unless I have information to the contrary?.

I use the registration district as the place the event took place if I have no other information. So that I know it is only a registration dustrict I call it eg. Patrington (RD), YKS. This distinguishes it from Patrington, YKS, where
I know the event did actually take place in the village.
Anne

Yes, I use a similar scheme to record the Place the Event happened as the Registration District.

I also tend to use Registration District, County as a proxy place of Birth/Death/Marriage until/unless I have a more accurate location. The only 'problems' I've encountered and have to manage are those Registration Districts that cross County Boundaries and a few that aren't 'true' place names. For much older records, I also tend to use 'the Parish of' where the only source information available is a Baptism/Burial Register Entry.

I tend to leave the place and address fields blank, unless I am pretty sure that they coincide with the registration area. The quarter date is a clue and then I put the details of place, volume and page in the note. The people in my current project are born married and died in my village, but the registration district is 7 miles away in a different county. In fact thinking about it I probably should go back and review all such situations in my other projects, because the registration district name has often been different from the place. Although I suppose it only tends to apply ultimately to the more peripheral people for whom you don't later splash out on a certificate.