Need help finding stillbirth records?

Stillborn babies inevitably have the tiniest of mentions on our family tree, and even then it can be hard to research the brief details we need, as across the UK and Ireland the GRO stillbirth registers are not open to the general public. However, the realisation that an ancestor suffered a stillborn baby can be so valuable to our understanding of their past lives. Family history pioneer Guy Etchells has recently set up a Historic Stillbirth Register to help people trace these stillbirths. Built from details gleaned from records such as parish registers it now lists 8,000 births, but this is a project that is growing and Guy is asking the wider family history community to contribute information about stillbirths that they have discovered.

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