Genealogy Chat

I have what my mother believes to be my grand uncles birth certificate. At the top it says certified copy of an entry of birth. It has on it 10 columns though only 9 are filled in. It gives all the expected information but in column 7 it says signature, description and residence of informant it says Henry Gordon, Occupier. Further down the same column it says Little Gaddesden which has been scored through it also says Ashridge Hospital, Berkhamstead. Henry Gordon is not a relative however it is possible he registered the birth either because my great grandmother gave birth in hospital and he was present at the birth or because it was 1943 and so world war 2 was raging. In column 8 it shows the birth was registered in the same month and year of birth.

It says at the bottom though I here by certify that the above is a true Copy of an Entry of birth of a Register Book in my custody. Witness my hand this 29th day of July 1947 J. G. Redding Deputy Superintendent Registrar.

Would this suggest the certificate I have is a copy of an original and not an original document?

You'd be correct in your assumption. If you were to send for another copy from GRO, you'd end up with a scan of the copy which was sent to them from District Registry Office. Neither the one you have nor the one held by GRO would be 'original'.

The top or original copy would have been handed to Henry Gordon with instructions to give it to the mother. The duplicate (either carbon or re-written) would be retained by the local Registry Office before they copied it and sent it to the GRO. Its always possible that the original entry was one of 3 if carbon paper was used.
One for the parent
One for the district registry office
One for GRO

Thank you for clearing that up detective :-)

I would dispute most of what ***Det*** says.

The original document - the one Henry Gordon signed - is a register with 5 entries per page.
(You could figure out where your entry is on the page from the Entry Number which is part of Col 1).
The b.cert you have was issued, presumably to a parent of your g uncle, when he was 4-ish.

At the end of each quarter, a copy of all the births was made for each subdistrict - here there were only 2 subdistricts (Berkhamstead and Tring) - and the copies sent to the Berkhamstead RD superintendent who checked them over, and forwarded the two bundles to the GRO.
Deaths are similar. When a B or D rego is full, it's retained by the Berkhamstead RD superintendent. (With redistricting, the original rego's are now held by Hertfordshire RD in Hatfield).

A b.cert from the GRO has a digital image of their copy superimposed on the certificate form.
(The certification must vary from the form you gave in your para 2
http://tinyurl.com/lrk36xp has an image of a GRO b.cert near the end)

Most local offices lack the capability of superimposing a digital image of their rego entry on their certificate forms, so you're unlikely to see the informant's signature.

********************

I don't know where ***Det*** got that rubbish about carbon copies from.
No one uses carbon copies for official documents - the carbon smudges off, and they're too easy to falsify.

It's odd that Henry Gordon is the informant - he presumably is some hospital official, but evenso, the mother would be the preferred informant.
Perhaps she was very sick, so they used Henry in order to get the boy rego'ed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashridge contains the following info:
During the Second World War, the building and the lawn in front of it was used as a secondary site for Charing Cross Hospital

If you look here it will explain about who could register a birth:-

http://www.dixons.clara.co.uk/Certificates/births.htm

This is just one of the 6 catagories of people who can register a birth:-

(5) The owner or occupier of the house or institution. This includes the master of the workhouse, matron of a hospital, a relative or friend if the mother had gone to have the baby there.

Kath. x

mgnv,

I think that your use of the word 'rubbish' in response to a helpful posting is entirely inappropriate for these boards.

Thank you mgnv and Kathleen for explaining it further.

I think this is the Henry that registered the birth (a secretary at the hospital):

1939
Household Ashridge House Little Gaddes Den , Berkhamsted R.D., Hertfordshire, England

Henry Robert Gordon 18 Mar 1892 Male Secretary Ashridge Hospital Married

Thank you for finding the record as it explains a lot.