Family Historian User Group

Hi All,

Two quick (I hope) questions. While adding my wife's grandfather I realised I didn't and no one else had a copy of his Birth Certificate, so I ordered a digital copy from GRO and It arrived today in a PDF format. Is there a way to view a PDF in the Media section the same way as I can an image (jpg)? Or am I better converting the file, as I don't like not being able to view it in the Media section. I am sure I have a few other PDF documents to be added later into the re-do and may as well convert them into files that can be viewed in FH while I am at it.

My other question is about something I noticed on the entry. In the When and Where Born section it gives the date, time and street name as I would expect, but under the street name it has UD written. Having never come across this before I wondered if anyone could enlighten me about what this may stand for.

WF

Convert to jpg either online or with one of the utilities and then you can view it as media. You can also store the pdf in the media record too, for printing by yourself or someone else but you won't be able to see a visual representation of it in FH. This is what i do so that I have a good quality pdf if I ever want to print the record.

WilliamFrier wrote: ↑

29 Aug 2019 17:53

...under the street name it has UD written.

Urban District. Which UD is sometimes obvious from the certificate, but if you can't figure it out, this site should help:

http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/

William the conversion strategy will work... until you have a multi-page PDF.

Have you tried attaching it to a media record as a PDF? You'll find it shows up as a PDF icon which you can double click on to open in your PC's PDF reader.

There are drawbacks when it comes to including PDFS in (e.g.) websites but there are ways around that if you decide to go the PDF route.

Helen,

I had added it as a PDF Media record and as you say if you double click it opens in my browser. I was just asking in case there was an option somewhere in the settings to allow me to view a PDF in the Media Window and I couldn't see it. I am sure there are no multi page PDF's but I will check.

Colin,

The last thing I would call the PDF that I received was good quality. It looks like it was badly scanned with a broken 1980's hand scanner. I was thinking about splitting the image, cropping and lining it up properly once I converted it.

WF

Not wanting to seem stupid, but what was an Urban District? The Certificate says Birkenhead as the Registration District, Sub District and County and when I checked the street it is in Birkenhead (amazingly). I just wondered what the significance of an Urban District was.

When faced with questions like that my first port of call is a Google search.
For Urban District that leads to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_dis ... d_Ireland) which says:
"In England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, an urban district was a type of local government district that covered an urbanised area. Urban districts had an elected urban district council, which shared local government responsibilities with a county council." ..... and so on .....

I had read that Mike, I just didn't see the importance of it being added to When and Where Born. It just seemed like a small town council. I would have thought Corporation Road, Birkenhead in the county of Birkenhead would suffice without adding those two letters.

You will also find:
RD = Rural District
USD = Urban Sanitary District
RSD = Rural Sanitary District
Like you I'm not sure why they bothered to add them.

Will keep a look out for these Mike, although not sure I will come across many. My family going back is mainly Scottish with a little Irish to mix up the gene pool.

I noticed that you said date and time. Time is not usually given except in the case of twins.

Learn something new every day, the time is very common on Scottish Birth Certificates as is parents date of marriage, so I never thought anything of it. He was a twin, when I told his children about it they were all surprised. His twin died when she was 6 and he obviously never spoke of it.