Genealogy Chat

How would I go about finding out if a person was declared dead.

If you are talking about someone who is missing and later declared dead, there will be a Death Certificate, which probably has some sort of statement on it about "presumed death".

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So what's the process for a missing person to be declared dead?

When someone goes missing, the police will try to establish whether the person has died by checking bank accounts and investigating possible sightings.

If they believe there should be an inquest, possibly to help the family receive a death certificate and reach closure, they will file a report to the local coroner. This will indicate if there are any suspicious circumstances.


THE ANSWER
A coroner requires permission from the justice secretary to hold an inquest without a body
A death certificate can then be issued
The coroner has to apply to the secretary of state (then home secretary, now justice secretary) under section 15 of the Coroners Act 1988 for permission for an inquest with no body. There is no time limit in such cases; the rule to wait seven years may only apply in the High Court on the settlement of an estate.

"In this case the secretary of state would have agreed to the order and the inquest would have been held," says a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice.

The number of requests received is less than 10 a year, he adds, and few are refused.

Sometimes there is an emotional pressure from the family who are desperate for a death certificate so they can move on, says one coroner, who does not want to be named.

But an inquest without a body operates very much on the evidence provided by the police, he says, and whether senior officers believe the individual in question has genuinely died.


WHO, WHAT, WHY?
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A regular part of the BBC News Magazine, Who, What, Why? aims to answer some of the questions behind the headlines
Malcolm Donnelly, the coroner who held Mr Darwin's inquest, says he recorded an open verdict because the exact circumstances were unclear. "I found he had probably died on or about the date of disappearance."

That decision was based on a balance of probability, and not beyond reasonable doubt.

Proof of death

At the end of an inquest, the coroner sends a death certificate to the Register of Births and Deaths, relating the findings of the inquest. This allows the family to register the death and get a state death certificate.

My grandfather died at sea in June 1911 . He was washed overboard in bad weather from a sailing ship on route from Melbourne to Bremen

A death cert was issued for him from the info taken from the ships log which detailed his demise with the longitude and latitude of the vessel at the time and the actions taken at the time

to find out if the death was registered in England or Wales .................. use the following site for deaths between July 1 1837 and about 1960 or 1965

www.freebmd.org.uk


the freebmd site is the one that most of us for all birth, marriage and death registrations during those years


More recent registrations may be found on ancestry

Grandfathers death cert was issued through the GRO marine indices which are on FMP

Issued as an overseas death