Family Historian User Group

I don't know if it has been mentioned before, but I have just noticed that GRO's on line death index now goes up to 2017. This is a really helpful extension. It would be fantastic if they added to it every year from now on.

It is even better than that, the drop down goes up to 2019, additional information needs to be supplied for events in last 50 year to order. At least the index entries are visible.

Births upto 1918 though

You are quite right, deaths go up to quarter 2 2019 which is amazing. Births have been up to 1918 since GROs on-line index was introduced.

I believe they are also on FindMyPast.

FindMyPast has death records up to 2018, but they are not complete and seem to be newspaper or other extracts (Ancestry has similar). These are however very useful in that the actual date and place of death are given. FMPs actual death index records go up to 2007. I believe GRO stated sometime ago that they would not be updating and publishing such indexes again, so this enhancement is most welcome.

These are however very useful in that the actual date and place of death are given.

They also have the England & Wales Government Probate Death Index 1960-2019 which includes exact date if death, and may help with cases which are not in their post-2007 deaths collection.

And since 1969 the date of birth replaced 'age at death' in the death index. So somewhat bizarrely it's sometimes possible to get the exact date of birth from the death index and the exact date of death from the Probate index. (The date of birth in the death index is of course unreliable as it depends on the informant's knowledge).

In Ancestry Births go up to 2007 and marriages to 2005

Victor

A surprise this morning, GROs updated index does not include 1958-1983, no idea why. Already found the most recent years useful though.

It doesn't include those years because they weren't digitsed in the Dove project. Think they got as far as 1957 and stopped. The later ones were always digitised, hence the gap. Unfortunately the date of birth is not given in those later ones on the GRO website, only the year.
Anne

Thank you, it is good to know the reason for this. Whilst these recent entries only have the year of birth it is very helpful to be able to identify a death up to earlier this year. One of the joys of family history research is using a variety of tools and piecing the evidence together.