Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked QuestionsFreeBMD stands for Free Births, Marriages, and Deaths. The FreeBMD Project's objective is to provide free Internet access to the Civil Registration index information for England and Wales, generally referred to as the GRO index from the government department, the General Register Office, that is responsible for it. The Civil Registration system for recording births, marriages, and deaths in England and Wales has been in place since 1837 and is one of the most significant single resources for genealogical research back to Victorian times.
The FreeBMD Project is therefore placing the Civil Registration index information (the GRO index) on the internet. The project started with the early years (that is from 1837) and is progressing through to 1983.
The GRO index has an entry for each event (Birth, Marriage or Death) that has been registered and each entry contains an abstract of the complete registration information. As a minimum this abstract contains the quarter in which the event was registered, the surname and givenname of the individual concerned and GRO reference information (District, Volume and Page - see here for more information). With this information it is possible to order from the GRO the complete registration information in the form of a certified copy of the register (commonly known as a certificate). At various points over the years additional information has been added to the abstract which makes finding the correct entry easier.
To learn how to use FreeBMD to search the GRO Index please see here - spending a few minutes learning how to use FreeBMD will speed up your research and make it more productive.
The indexes to this information on births, marriages, and deaths provide a first step to the genealogy researcher in determining important facts about an individual ancestor. The GENUKI page Civil Registration in England and Wales provides guidance as to how one can then make use of these entries to purchase the certificate(s) which provide actual genealogical information.
Additional information regarding using Civil Registration certificates in genealogical research may be found at England & Wales Registration Certificate Tutorials. FreeBMD has its own pages, too.
The Civil Registration indexes have been freely available from a variety of non-electronic sources for some time now. Small parts of the indexes have already been placed on the Internet. In addition, the Civil Registration indexes for Scotland, which are separate from those of England and Wales, have already been placed online on a pay-per-view basis at Scotland's People.
Usually available on microfilm or microfiche, the Civil Registration indexes can be illegible due to the varying quality of microreproduction. There is not currently any centrally available method for rapidly searching the indexes. They were originally created alphabetically by quarters and have not been consolidated into a master index. Older marriage records have not been cross-indexed, making them extremely tedious to use.
The creation of a freely accessible Internet-based database of the Civil Registration index information coupled with a free search engine facility will greatly enhance a researcher's ability to quickly and easily locate all the index entries of potential relevance. It will also permit the double-checking and eventual correction of the indexes.
A researcher will visit the FreeBMD web site and enter their ancestor's surname, first name(s), whether a birth, marriage or death is of interest and so on. Additional search criteria such as year of the event, registration district, etc. may also be entered to help narrow the search. Wildcards and multiple selections can also be used (e.g. select several registration districts to be searched simultaneously).
The search facility will return all results which match the search criteria (though we limit the total number to avoid overload). The information provided in the results is:
the researcher will hopefully be able to ascertain the correct index reference (volume and page numbers) for the birth, marriage, or death of interest. These reference numbers can then be used further to research this ancestor (see FAQ 1 above). There are a number of other facilities to help the researcher which FreeBMD provides through analysis of the overall data:
The FreeBMD database is available for search.
Using volunteers throughout the world, the FreeBMD Project leadership (see FAQ 7 below) co-ordinates the entry of the Civil Registration indexes. Data entered into the database will be available for access through the search facility. The database will be updated periodically (approximately monthly) with the latest available data.
The transcription of the Civil Registration index is co-ordinated under the guidance of the FreeBMD Project leadership by volunteer co-ordinators so the FreeBMD Project makes orderly progress towards its goal.
Data is also be accepted from previous extractions by those performing one-name studies.
Data is accepted in a variety of formats, including a simple text format which can be prepared off-line using basic word-processing, spreadsheet or database management software. Special transcription software is available to assist with the task of transcribing pages of the index.
Ultimately, all data will be entered at least twice by independent transcribers in order to improve the accuracy.
You think it's a long way to the chip shop... FreeBMD is big. Really big! It'll take a long time from start to finish, but it is already being useful to researchers a lot earlier than our estimated end date. Of course, the more people help, the sooner it will be done.
It was estimated that at the start of the Project we would complete first keying of the years 1837 to 1901 by the end of December 2007.
This target was substantially achieved in July 2005.
By the end of December 2007 first keying of the years 1837 to 1919 were substantially completed.
By the end of December 2010 first keying of the years 1837 to 1948 were substantially completed.
By the end of December 2012 first keying of the years 1837 to 1960 were substantially completed.
By the end of December 2016 first keying of the years 1837 to 1977 were substantially completed.
And finally...current estimates are that first keying of the years 1837-1983 will be completed by the end of December 2018.
Current statistics on the database to date are available here and here.
The FreeBMD Project is ENTIRELY dependent on the efforts of volunteers all
over the world in order to complete the project.
For information on contributing to the project as a transcriber click here.
You can also join one of our FreeBMD mailing lists by clicking here.
Currently, we are looking for people to help in the following areas:
The FreeBMD Project Leadership consists of Graham Hart, Ben Laurie, Camilla von Massenbach, and David Mayall. These individuals are responsible for the FreeBMD Project (see FAQ 8 and 11 below).
Graham Hart has worked for 15 years in the computer industry, and has been a genealogist for as long.
Ben Laurie is a member of the Apache Group, author of Apache: The Definitive Guide and Technical Director of A.L. Digital Ltd.. He doesn't claim to be an expert genealogist, but he knows how to make computers do tricks.
Camilla von Massenbach finds herself incapable of writing a CV and is eager for someone else to do it. She spends many a happy hour at the PRO in Kew.
David Mayall is an amateur genealogist and professional IT researcher.
The Office for National Statistics has granted the FreeBMD Project leadership permission to place the Civil Registration on the Internet. As stated in the ONS' letter, there are certain restrictions to this grant of permission including:
The Civil Registration indexes are under Crown copyright. They are the intellectual property of the British government.
Authority to reproduce the information for free access on the Internet was originally granted to the FreeBMD Project leadership.
In order to ensure the long term stability of the project, and to gain access to grant funding, the project leaders established FreeBMD as a trust in June 2002. The trust is registered with the Charity Commissioners as Free UK Genealogy CIO, Number 1167484. The Constitution can be viewed on-line.
In 2014 we changed the name to Free UK Genealogy which better reflects the aims of the charity. Free UK Genealogy is committed to supporting the transcription of public records and making these available as free access public databases.
All rights in data submitted to the site are now owned by the charitable trust.
The names of the trustees of the trust can be found here.
No. The ONS granted the right to place the database on the Internet on the condition that access to it be free of charge. Any commercialisation of the database would require the ONS' prior and very improbable authorisation.
The indexes are computerised from 1984 onwards. Unfortunately, the post-1984 indexes are not, at present, available free of charge on the internet but copies can be consulted free of charge in a small number of libraries;
ONS/GRO were are involved in a project to computerise earlier records but this appears to have been abandoned.
In a word, no. It is actually illegal for anyone except the registrars to browse the source records (and even they are only allowed to do it within strict guidelines - which, sadly, do not include checking accuracy for us).
There are a number of barriers to this seemingly attractive idea:
N.B. We are not suggesting that you shouldn't experiment with OCR for your own transcriptions. If you have success, we would very much like to hear about it.
(Items 15 & 16 withdrawn as being only relevant to transcribers)
The Data Protection Act applies to all information held about living individuals. The GRO information held by FreeBMD is publically available and therefore not confidential in itself but FreeBMD still has to ensure that the information is held and used properly, hence the conditions of use and the restrictions on the search results page. FreeBMD therefore complies with the Data Protection Act and is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference number Z7436529.
(Item 18 withdrawn as it is only relevant to Commission Junction which is no longer used by FreeBMD)
This is due to a bug in Safari, the MAC browser, which is corrected in Safari version 3.0.4 which comes with the 10.4.11 update of MacOSX 10.4. Please upgrade to MacOSX 10.4.11 or later to cure this problem.
Soundex is quite old now but we have been unable to find an alternative (e.g. Metaphone) that provides the expected result. We note that there are some genalogical sites that do provide the expected results but these seem to be based on a lookup table of alternatives for each name. This only works for smaller databases (since it requires multiple searches), not on one the size of the FreeBMD database.
We will continue to monitor this issue but at the moment there is no proposal to change the phonetic search facility.
However, it is also possible to request that the GRO corrects the index. Contact the
GRO
with the appropriate information. When they agree the correction let us know
(via 
) and we will annotate FreeBMD appropriately.
Regrettably the GRO has no method of informing the many holders of the index (both online and physical) of corrections they make.
Corrections are therefore automatically filtered to determine if they appear to comply with the instructions given on the corrections page.
The problem most people have with submitting corrections is failing to supply a valid Source field. This happens because people do not comply with the instructions on the corrections page. Unfortunately these instructions have to be long to specifically cover the things people get wrong since we know from past experience that just giving a simple statement of what should be provided does not work. The most common things people get wrong are:
button next to the entry in the search results
Provided that a birth took place in the UK, then the registration would have been completed as normal.
For anyone born overseas (armed forces or otherwise) alternative arrangements apply and FreeBMD would not have the data. The same applies to armed forces deaths overseas.
For forces deaths, particuarly overseas, FreeBMD probably would not have a record so we suggest you do an internet search for "forces war records" to find appropriate resources. For deaths in the World Wars the Commonwealth War Graves Commission provides information and has a search facility. With information from this source you should be able to obtain a certificate from the GRO. It is possible to get the MoD to do a search for service records for a fee, but a large proportion of the WW1 service records were destroyed by German bombing in WW2. You can also get a copy of a soldier's medal record from the National Archives in Kew (it is believed that those killed in conflict were automatically awarded a posthumous medal).
(This FAQ was added in 2010 and is unlikely to be relevant for more than a few years after that) If you have a new computer you are probably using Internet Explorer 8 which can operate in two modes: "Standards Mode" for sites that comply with the International Standards for web sites and "Compatibility Mode" for sites that use the standards associated with Internet Explorer 7. We have demonstrated that some pages that comply with the International Standards do not work properly in "Standards Mode" so we suggest you try "Compatibility Mode". To find out how to do this you can search for "ie8 compatibility mode" in whatever search engine you use. There is an archived article here but a search may find a more relevant article.
FreeBMD is a volunteer organisation the objective of which is to provide
free access over the internet to the GRO Index. If you have problems using the site you
can use our support facility but this too is manned by volunteers
and can only be used for problems specific to using FreeBMD. For help with genealogical
research you need to search the internet for relevant forums and ask for help there, or
contact your local library to see if you have a historical society near to you who could help.
Also FreeBMD has some links here.
FreeBMD is a transcription of the GRO index which contains records of Births, Marriages and Deaths for England and Wales. Hence, overseas events are not in FreeBMD and neither are events in Scotland, Northern Island, Eire, the Channel Islands, at sea, etc. To find information on such events we suggest you do an internet search for the relevant information, for example the National Archives have useful information on events overseas and at sea.
FreeBMD is a transcription of the GRO index and is of use for historical research. It is of
very limited, if any, use for tracing living persons.
We suggest you do an internet search for "Trace Person" to find available resources,
e.g. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/looking-for-person/living-person.htm.
However, bear in mind that a number of resources will charge for their services whereas
others are free. FreeBMD is also of limited use in finding if a person is still living
due to limited coverage of Deaths for recent years - see
coverage for Deaths for more information.
FreeBMD is an online transcription of the GRO index and therefore questions about what is
in the index can only be definitively answered by the GRO. However, our understanding is
that, in principle, stillbirths have never been recorded in the GRO index. From 1927
stillbirths could be recorded by being entered into the stillbirth register but this
was optional. Access to the stillbirth register is only available to relatives.
Before that stillbirths were not officially recorded although some entries in the
registers may be for stillbirths. For further information contact the GRO or do an
internet search for "stillbirth register"
FreeBMD is a transcription of the GRO (General Register Office)
Index, authorised by the GRO. The GRO Index of Births, Marriages and
Deaths is publicly available information and as such it is not covered by the Data
Protection Act. In addition to FreeBMD it is accessible from a number of sources,
both online and in person, and therefore exclusion from FreeBMD would have little
effect with regard to concealment of the information.
There is no facility for excluding entries and, indeed, it would be in violation
of our accuracy commitment to do so.
For further information please contact the
GRO.
Please see the results help page.
Click on the
This error can occur when accessing the Information page for an entry.
Each month FreeBMD deploys a new version of the database containing new
entries transcribed since the last version as well as other, less obvious,
changes. The link to the information page for the entry is specific to the
version of the database that was used to search for the entry. Whilst old
versions of the database are kept for a while, eventually they will be
deleted and attempts to use the link will give 'Out of date reference'. It
will be necessary to do the search again with the current database.
This problem can be avoided by using a citation for the
entry (see previous item).
29. Does FreeBMD contain entries for stillbirths?
30. Please can you remove my entry from FreeBMD
31. Can you explain what the search results mean
32. How can I get a citation for an entry?
button next to the entry and scroll
down to Citations. You should note that a citation applies to the specific
entry concerned and if the entry no longer exists the citation will fail. This
can happen, for example, if the entry is revised to contain different data since
the entry that the citation refers to no longer exists.
33. Why am I getting 'Out of date reference'?
We would like to thank Brian Randell and Mark Howells for their hard work in producing this FAQ.
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