How to use death certificates for family history

Birth, marriage and death (BMD) records are one of the key building blocks of family history and will help you to identify major events in your ancestor’s life.

• Read more about marriage certificates
• Read more about birth certificates

By obtaining certificates from the General Register Office (GRO) for these three key events, you’ll obtain important dates and facts about your ancestor and can take your family tree back another generation by discovering other family members, as we show you here, an exploration of birth, marriage and death records.

Here, we're going to concentrate on death certificates and other records of death

 

A quick introduction to death certificates and records

Civil registration of deaths in England and Wales began on 1 July 1837, replacing the Church of England’s records of burials as the primary legal record.

For Scotland the start date was 1 January 1855, and for Ireland 1 January 1864.

It’s fair to say that, as a genealogical source, death certificates fall far short of what we might expect from documents recording one of the three main events in our ancestors’ lives.

In fact, some family historians consider death certificates to be of so little use that they rarely, if ever, go to the trouble and expense of obtaining copies of them.

Most researchers, however, like to ‘kill off their ancestors’, mapping their whole lives from cradle to grave. In addition, an ancestor's cause of death can shed light on their life. (Was the cause occupation-related? Did they die during an epidemic? Did any other family members perish at or near the time? Answers to questions such as these provide valuable insights for our family history research.)

In the old days, when the only way to do this was to carry out a physical search through the General Register Office’s (GRO) index books, this could be a time-consuming and exhausting process.

Nowadays, unless the name is particularly common, it’s usually possible to find our ancestors’ deaths quite easily.

How to find & order death certificates for family history

For England and Wales use an online database such as FreeBMD or the GRO, which provide details of deaths since 1837. Either of these websites will give you the index details free of charge. To obtain the full details you'll need to order a certificate (paper certificate = £12.50; or pdf = £8; or digital image = £3, where available).

Six large libraries (in Birmingham, Bridgend, Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth and The British Library) plus the City of Westminster Archives Centre, offer free of charge access to the GRO indexes on microfiche, whilst a list of organisations which hold full or regional index microfiches can be found on the GRO website.

Once you’ve found the reference (ie the volume number and the page number, which you will see on the death index entry), visit the GRO website to order the certificate. 

See below for a comparison of index details versus the full details that a certificate can provide.

With a death register index entry, for instance, you will be able to see typically the following details:

• Surname and first name
• Age at death (on the GRO indexes from 1837; on the FreeBMD indexes from 1866). From the second quarter of 1969 onwards the death register indexes provide the deceased's precise date of birth. This is extremely useful for cross-checking that you have the correct ancestor's index entry.
• Registration district
• Volume and page number (which you need to help you order the correct death certificate).

With a death certificate, you will be able to see the following details:

• Full name
• Registration district and subdistrict
• Date and place of death
• Date and place of birth (from 1969)
• Maiden surname for married women (from 1969)
• Occupation and usual address
• Cause of death
• Name and qualification of the informant (qualification for instance stating in what capacity the informant was connected to the deceased; they may be a relative or an official).
• Date the death was registered.

It's worth remembering that the details made available, both via the indexes and via the certificates, have changed over time - so study each death index and each death register entry or certificate available to you carefully, to ensure you glean every last clue.

Scottish death register entries additionally include details of the parents of the deceased (eg name and occupation of the father, name and maiden name of the mother), and the time of death.

For further details regarding the change in details recorded on Scottish death register entries over time, see the useful information on Scottish Indexes.

For Scotland visit ScotlandsPeople. Here you can search for deaths since 1855 free of charge. You can pay (6 credits = £1.50) to view digitised images of death register entries up until 50 years ago; for more recent deaths you will need to order a death certificate (£12), which you can do from your search results on ScotlandsPeople.

For Ireland visit IrishGenealogy for all Ireland, from 1864 up until 31 December 1921; plus for the Republic of Ireland up until 50 years ago to search the indexes and obtain digitised death register entries free of charge. For more recent times you will need to order a certificate (20 Euros plus postage) from the General Register Office Ireland, see here.

For Northern Ireland see NIdirect - certificates cost £15. You can order death certificates from 1864 to present day on via this website. Do remember that the IrishGenealogy website has records for Northern Ireland up until the end of 1921.

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Watch the 60-second video guide to death certificates

Helen from Family Tree gives us a quick guide to death certificates and why you shouldn't always ignore them… 

"The temptation is often just to use marriage and birth certificates, because they’re the ones that help build the generations of our family trees. But death certificates are important too.

"Take this example: not only do we have the person’s full name, but also their date and place of birth, their former occupation, the name of the informant (which can be really interesting), and the cause of death. That last detail can sometimes point to inherited family health problems, so it’s always worth noting.

"Death certificates also give you a clear end point in a person’s life. They provide a neat “package” for your records and ensure you don’t accidentally continue researching someone who has already died. They help keep your research organised.

"So I’m a big advocate — do look up death certificates and make sure you order them if you want a really solid family tree."

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Who registered the death?

It’s important to bear in mind that the information recorded on a death certificate is only as reliable as the knowledge of the person supplying it.

Ages can often be no more than an intelligent guess and there is a demonstrable tendency to give ages in round numbers, i.e. 80 rather than 79 or 81, if uncertain.

Don’t ignore the information about the informant. This was often a relative, although the relationship isn’t always stated. In the case of an adult male, this could be the only useful genealogical detail recorded on the certificate. Even if the informant turns out to have been a neighbour, their identity could provide a vital clue.

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Wills, probate & burials

Death records have obvious links to records of probate and burials.

The entries in the National Probate Calendars record a substantial amount of detail about the individuals concerned. The calendars (from 1858 right up until 1967) record include a succinct but extremely informative nugget of information: the deceased’s full name, residence, date and place of death, value of their estate, and the names of their executors or administrators are recorded. For their age/date of birth, cause of death and information about the informant, a death certificate would need to be referred to.

However, not everyone left a will; to put it in perspective, 528,624 deaths were registered in England and Wales in the year 1880, but the probate calendars record the wills and administrations of just 42,608 people who died that year, representing only 8 per cent of the total number of deaths, and this figure includes a significant number of people who died in other parts of the UK or overseas.

For many researchers, tracing a record of a burial is as important as finding the death certificate, particularly if it can lead to the discovery of a gravestone. Records of burials and monumental inscriptions can also be used as a tool to identify death records. To read an overview guide to parish registers (which include burial registers), see here.

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Scottish death certificates

Unlike their English and Welsh equivalents, Scottish death certificates represent a significant genealogical source.

The names of both parents of the deceased (including the mother’s maiden surname) are recorded as standard, although it’s worth considering the reliability of this information.

In 1855, the first year of civil registration in Scotland, additional information was recorded including the deceased’s birthplace, the names and years of birth of their children, the years of death of any children who had predeceased them and their place of burial. These were all dropped in 1856, with the exception of the place of burial, which survived until 1860. 

For more information visit www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk.

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Irish death certificates

Irish death certificates are identical to the standard English and Welsh format with the addition of a column to record the individual’s ‘condition’; ie their marital status. For the Republic of Ireland order certificates from www.groireland.ie and for Northern Ireland go to www.nidirect.gov.uk/gro.

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Scottish and Irish birth, marriage and death records

Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in Scotland began from 1 January 1855 and you can obtain records from the ScotlandsPeople website.

BMD registration in Ireland dates to 1 January 1864, with certificates available from GRO Ireland and GRO Northern Ireland.

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