Family Historian User Group

I'm new to this! If I go to the Family Records Centre in London and have the details of birth's marriages and Deaths from the indexes can I view the certificates or registry entries? I've found that I can order copies but at £7 each that would soon get very expensive at the rate I'm finding new relatives! So I wondered if I took a day of work and go down there if I can just view them and confirm or disprove what I suspect? It seems a shame to take a day off go down there and find out you can't and nowhere seems to explicitly say you can.

Thanks
Martyn

ID:638

To the best of my knowledge all you can see are the indexes, you still need to order certificates to see the details.

Lots of detailed information on this site :

England and Wales Birth, Marriage, and Death Certificates

at the FRC (and elsewhere) you can only view the GRO indexes, not the entries themselves without purchasing a certificate.
if you find likely entries, it will tell you whiat the local registration district is.

In the local regster offices, the local marriage indexes are arranged by each church - you can identify from the local indexes which church a marriage took place in - then you can view the parish registers to view the full marriage details without having to obtain the certificates. (If the marriage was in a registry office, then you do need to buy a certificate)  - the reference numbers here only apply when obtaining a certificate from the local office, NOT the FRC/GRO.

for some counties (e.g. Yorkshire - http://www.yorkshirebmd.org.uk/), the indexes from the local offices are online - these tell you the name of the church so you can check the PR's where available.


Jeremy

Thank you for that Jane it could have saved me a wasted journey and day off. I have several parts of my family tree where the certificates seem the way forward but that would start to make this a very expensive hobby. I'll try the site you gave me and see if that can take me forward. I seem to have a set of family names which although not the most frequent do bring up enough matches for it to be difficult to tell for sure which are my relatives.

Best regards,
Martyn

Thank you Jeremy, more useful advice that is much appreciated.

Martyn

at the FRC (and elsewhere) you can only view the GRO indexes, not the entries themselves without purchasing a certificate.
if you find likely entries, it will tell you whiat the local registration district is.

In the local regster offices, the local marriage indexes are arranged by each church - you can identify from the local indexes which church a marriage took place in - then you can view the parish registers to view the full marriage details without having to obtain the certificates. (If the marriage was in a registry office, then you do need to buy a certificate)  - the reference numbers here only apply when obtaining a certificate from the local office, NOT the FRC/GRO.

for some counties (e.g. Yorkshire - http://www.yorkshirebmd.org.uk/), the indexes from the local offices are online - these tell you the name of the church so you can check the PR's where available.


Jeremy

Thats one advantage with my Taubman line, if they are in Liverpool they are mine

They did marry Kelly's though and they are not so easy.

I have done a lot of my research from Parish Records for my own (village) based family's, but my husbands Liverpool based ones are all over the place and certificates are sometimes the only way to go.

You may already know this but you can search the full GRO indexes online at http://www.1837online.com.You do have to pay (not too expensive especially since the method of searching has been improved) but you do not have to go to London or take the day off work!I use this quite a bit to find people not on FreeBMD or to check a reference before ordering certificates.Hope this is of some help.[smile]

Thank you, all advice appriciated. The main reason I was going to London was that I thought that you could see copies of the registers / certificates there. It seems that that is not the case and that really there is not much advantage to going there than using online or library copies of the indexes and then ordering copies online. Thanks to all who replied it has saved me some wasted time and money.