General Chat

In medeaevil times, you would get as many people as possible to swear that you were of full age. They would say things like: I remember, because there was a great fire/my son was killed/I saw the priest writing the event in a book/I was given a ring by the child's father etc etc etc. (you just wouldn't believe how packed with incident the middle ages were!) In later times, you would get a copy of your baptismal certificate. This was how I knew where an ancestor came from, as the certificate was filed with his lieutenant's passing certificate. The next entry was for a young man who had been privately baptised. It had been the custom of that parish only to record public baptisms. Consequently there was a signed affidavit to that effect from the current vicar, saying that he had made enquiries and the boy was the age he said he was.

If you have a birth cert copy,it states at the bottom that it isnt a legal proof of identity.

My great grandmothers (Granny) birth was never registered. She always believed that she was born 9 April 1900 but she's not on the census in 1901. When she came to a pensionable age my grandmother helpped to apply for the pension but when they applyed to the register office in Kent, they basically said Granny didn't exscist. I don't know how they got around the lack of birth certificate as Granny had never had a passport or a driving licence and as far as I knowshe wsn't christened. I do wonder if they used something like a ration book / war time ID card or something to prove when she was in school. The alternation would have been to have testimonials from her siblings saying how old she was and hat she was older / younger than them - Granny was the only child that was not registered. I heard someone mention on Sat that a relative of theirs didn't have a birth cert to claim their pension so they had to have testamonials from old school chums swearing that this person was in school with them and providing their birth cert of evidence of age.

The way to prove your age before birth certificates was with baptism records. That is why so many people got there children baptised. Louise

My grandmother b. 1894 was not registered at birth, but as they were Catholics, she had a baptismal certificate as proof of age - I'm lucky enough to have it! Trudi

Nobody ever asks me :-((((((((((

I don't think they could and that's why so many 'boys' died in the wars that we have had!! xx

What I was thinking of was those people who were born pre 1900 and were not registered?

Depends what you are talking about and when.

Passport, Driving licence...

Well I had to prove my age a couple of weeks ago and was told my passport would do... but sent birth cert instead Anne:)))

how do you prove how old you are, if you do not have a birth certificate?