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Old 29-09-21, 22:34
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Default How often does this sort of thing happen?

OH has a distant cousin born in Ireland in about 1899. She appears on the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses aged 2 and is one of several siblings. She is the only one of the children not to have been registered.

In later life this cousin came to England where she married, had children and eventually died. The intriguing thing is that on the 1939 Register and on her death cert a date of birth in 1900 is given. This date cannot be correct as it is too close to the next sibling in her family. It turns out the date of birth she used is that of one of her first cousins who had the same name, but of course, different parents. I imagine she must have applied for a birth certificate at some point, but the correct cert wouldn't have been available because she wasn't registered. Somehow she either accepted the date from the wrong certificate or she only had a short cert issued and so it wasn't obvious that it wasn't the right one.

So, how many people deliberately, or otherwise, used other people's documents and got away with it?!! I'm thinking probably a lot more than we realise.
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Old 29-09-21, 22:43
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I think we had a thread about this once before, didn't we?
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Old 29-09-21, 22:55
Olde Crone Olde Crone is offline
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Yes, I think we did have a thread about this, and we certainly had a thread about my friend's gran who got her pension four years early because the GRO sent the birth cert of a sister who had died and who had a very similar name. Gran protested but was toldd she must be mistaken about her age!

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Old 29-09-21, 23:23
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Some of the birth dates on the 1939 Register are not correct, when you compare with GRO indexes. I don't know whether people really made a mistake and genuinely thought they were born in a different year, or if it was deliberate, or a transcription error when compiling the Register as we see it.

That said, I have been looking for a couple of people who don't appear to have been registered - maybe they were registered under another name, but how would you find it ?

I can see the dilemma of someone else with the same name in the same family being confused by the GRO, if they came across the wrong one first and it was near enough, would they bother to check further?

Last edited by marquette; 29-09-21 at 23:26.
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Old 30-09-21, 07:19
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A colleague was born in a remote part of Kashmir and has never had a birth certificate, her father used her sister's on her behalf all through her childhood, she used it when she trained as a doctor and it is her registered birth date at work which is why we all chipped in for a 60th birthday present 18 months too early. She didn't get another present on her "real" birthday.
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Old 30-09-21, 08:20
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I deliberately didn't mention OC's Charlotte/Lottie (I think?) dilemma! I still remember turning up the death record for the older girl and my brain refusing to
process what could have happened!

I forgot to mention, in OH's cousin's case there were not two women walking around with the same details as the child who was registered died aged 6. I did wonder if this had any impact on the use of her birth cert, but I'm thinking most likely not.

In general I was surprised when the 1939 Register became available that so many people had the correct dob! Having said that, when they are incorrect it's very often just the year that is wrong (my gran's entry is incorrect, as expected, with an illegible number altered to 1895 and then altered again to 1898, but she was born in 1892). Also, those that appear to be incorrect often do match with their death record, 25+ years later, so a date has been preserved by them/their family etc over a long time.

In OH's relative's instance I would never had realised the signficance of the date if she and her cousin had been born in England/Wales because I wouldn't have paid for the "other" birth cert just to see the date, but of course many decades of registrations are available free to view for Ireland.
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Old 30-09-21, 13:01
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I have so many certs with either mistakes or deliberate lies on them, I could wallpaper a room. My mother wasn’t even registered......we think. How do you know what to look for?
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