Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates

General Register Office

The General Register Office or GRO hold all Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates for England and Wales, since Civil Registration began on the 1st July 1837.  You can find full details on their website of all the records that they hold, including adoption records and also information on how to obtain certificates for births, marriages and deaths that took place overseas.  Note: The GRO now also offer an Online Ordering Service for Certificates and you can find details about this from the main index page.

There are separate registration offices for:

• Scotland
• Northern Ireland

Other Sites connected with Civil Registration

• Free BMD - This is an ongoing project to transcribe the Civil Registration Indexes of Births, Marriages and Deaths, otherwise known as the GRO Indexes.  More transcribers are alway welcome, so please visit the Transcribers section of this website if you would like to help.
• Find my Past - Online scans of the GRO Indexes, amongst other records including census and passenger lists.  You will need to purchase 'credits' to view the scans of records, although the indexes are free to search.
• Civil Registration - GENUKI give information on how certificates can be obtained from the Local Register Offices in Devon.   There is also an index of the towns and parishes covered by each of the Devon Registration Districts
• UK BDM Exchange - This is no longer a free site, but contains information on the details contained within nearly 90,000 Birth, Marriages and Death certificates.  There are also records of baptisms, marriages and church records pre-1837, before Civil Registration began.
• UK BMD - Not to be confused with the UK BDM Exchange above! This website provides links to websites that have online transcriptions of UK births, marriages, deaths and census information.  You can select by county to view the links provided.