STATE REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS, MARRIAGES & DEATHS
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Deaths.
Marriages.
Genealogical Relevance.
A general word of warning about civil registration.
Late Registrations.

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State Registration of Births, Marriages & Death


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State registration of non-Roman Catholic marriages began in Ireland in 1845. All births, deaths, and marriages have been registered in Ireland since 1864.

In order to appreciate what precisely these records consist of, it is necessary to have some idea at least of how registration began. It was, in fact, an offshoot of the Victorian public health system, in turn based on the Poor Law, an attempt to provide some measure of relief for the most destitute.

Between 1838 and 1852, 163 workhouses were built throughout the country, each at the centre of an area known as a Poor Law Union. The workhouses were normally situated in a large market town, and the Poor Law Union comprised the town and its catchment area, with the result that the Unions in many cases ignored the existing boundaries of parish and county. This had consequences for research which we shall see below.

In the 1850s, a large-scale public health system was created, based on the areas covered by the Poor Law Unions. Each Union was divided into Dispensary Districts, with an average of six to seven Districts per Union, and a Medical Officer, normally a doctor, was given responsibility for public health in each District. When the registration of all births, deaths and marriages then began, in 1864, these Dispensary Districts also became Registrar's Districts, with a Registrar responsible for collecting the registrations within this District. In most cases, the Medical Officer for the Dispensary District now also acted as the Registrar for the same area, but this did not invariably happen. The superior of the Registrar was the Superintendent Registrar, responsible for all the Registers within the old Poor Law Union. The returns for the entire Poor Law Union (also known both as the Superintendent Registrar's District and, simply, the Registration District) were indexed and collated centrally, and master indexes for the entire country were produced at the General Register Office in Dublin. These are the indexes which are now generally used for public research.

Because of the history of the system, responsibility for registration still rests with the Department of Health. The arrangement at present is that the local Health Boards hold the original registers, with the General Register Office, at 8-11 Lombard St, Dublin 2, holding the master indexes to all 32 counties up to 1921, and to the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland after that date. For Northern Ireland, from 1921, the indexes and registers are held at Oxford House, Chichester St, Belfast.

Under the original system, the local registrars forwarded their records to Dublin, where they were copied and then returned to the local office. As well as the master indexes for the entire country, the General Register Office also contains microfilms of all of these copy registers, and is the only part of the registration system which permits comprehensive public research. The indexes are available to the public on the first floor of 8 Lombard St, at a fee of £1.50 per five years searched, or £12 for a general search. It is important to note that only the indexes are open to the public; to obtain the full information contained in the original register entry, it is necessary to purchase a print-out from the microfilm, at £1.50 per entry. These print-outs are supplied for information only, and have no legal standing. Full certificates, for use in obtaining passports or in testamentary transactions, cost £5.50. Limited research, covering five years of the Indexes, is carried out by the staff in response to postal queries only , for the same fee, £5.50.

It is also possible to carry out research in the local registrar's offices around the country, although this is at the discretion of the local officials. In some cases, particularly for common surnames, this can be the only way to re-construct a whole family, since the research is on the original registers, rather than indexes. Some of the local heritage centres, including Clare, Derry, Mayo and Tipperary South, now have database transcripts of these local registers. Only commissioned research is possible.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons, has copies of almost all of the General Register Office indexes and registers, and permits access through the local Family History Centers; because direct access to both registers and indexes is possible, research in an LDS center can often be more fruitful than a visit to the General Register Office itself. In addition, some parts of the early years of birth registrations appear to be included in the LDS International Genealogical Index, which is searchable online, and the 2002 edition of the LDS CD set, British Isles Vital Records, includes an index to birth registrations from 1864 to 1875 inclusive.