Free BMD

Gone are the days of needing to make long searches through the bulky Birth, Marriage and Death index volumes at Somerset house, St. Catharine’s house, Middleton place, or fiches at the Family History Centre. You can now do it quickly on the internet. FreeBMD mostly covers pre 1900 entries, but the years it covers are growing rapidly. FreeBMD has excellent search capabilities, you can specify searches in counties or registration districts and between specified date ranges

Example
My wife's grandfather Ralph BIDWELL is in a family of 11 children born and living in Salisbury in the 1881 census (RG11/2071/23) His brother Arthur William BIDWELL is 5 in 1881.

Arthur is living in Reading in the 1901 Census (RG13/1145/69/20)         Arthur W. Bidwell Head/M/25 Traveller born Wilts Salisbury         Sybil do Wife/M/21 born Gloucestershire Gloucester         166 Castle Street, St. Mary, Reading, Berkshire, England Search in Marriages for Arthur BIDWELL marrying Sybil (blank surname) in the date range 1893 to 1901 and you will get the following:         Marriages Mar 1901 BIDWELL Arthur William Gloucester 6a 458 Before 1852, up to 4 marriages were entered on each page of the register. After that there are usually 2 per page. Each page of the register is identified by the District, Volume and Page. Click on the page number (458) to see all the people listed on the page and you will see:       Marriages Mar 1901        BIDWELL Arthur William Gloucester 6a 458        NICHOLLS Beatrice Gertrude Gloucester 6a 458        NICHOLLS Ernest Arthur Gloucester 6a 458        ONLEY Sybil Gloucester 6a 458 So, I have found that they were married in Gloucester in the March Quarter of 1901 and (without having to buy their marriage certificate) that Sybil’s maiden name is ONLEY.

Find when a person dies using Date of Birth in your search
The GRO index contains the age at death from 1st Jan 1866, if you know when a person was born then you can use that date to narrow down your such, this works well even for very common names. To do this specify in the Age at Death field the Date of Birth as EITHER @day/month/year OR use a range of dates: @day/month/year-day/month/year Think of the @ sign as meaning born at this date. The year must be 4 digits (e.g. 1875); either the day or the day/month can be omitted.

Example
William Bass was born 11 Feb1852, in the 1901 census he was living in Grantham. Search for a death for William Bass from 1901 and you get over 100 entries. However, search after 1901 with @11/02/1852 in the “Death age/DoB” box and you get just 3 deaths listed, one of them in Grantham – this must be the man!

FreeBMD calculates the Date of Birth from the Age at Death and the quarter in which the death was registered. Note however, that the Date of Birth derived from the Age at Death has a wide latitude, typically 18 months when a precise Date of Birth is supplied and 30 months when only the year is supplied