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General Register Office
The General Registrar Office is responsible for the registration of births, marriages and deaths and the purchase of certificates.
Certificates may be ordered online, and are cheaper if you know the index reference. Index references may be looked up on findmypast, familyrelatives.com or Ancestry (there is a charge), or there is a good, but incomplete, index on FreeBMD (also available on Ancestry). Many Records Offices have copies of the indexes on microfiche. In addition you can look up in the actual indexes (if you are fit and healthy as they are very heavy) at the Family Records Centre in London,
Because of the problems of producing the early indexes - which meant copying information by hand several times before the entry was written into the index book, there are quite a lot of errors. (See A Comedy of Errors.) If there has been an error the local Registrar Office may be able to help out with the "original" version. The GRO site has links to the local offices.
Page updated March 2007