My Birth Certificate

Birth, Marriage, Death

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ninatoo
Posts: 1221
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2005 10:42 am
Location: Australia

My Birth Certificate

Post by ninatoo » Thu Mar 23, 2023 11:26 am

Hello everyone!

It's been an age since I wrote here but I am still around, reading posts here and there and researching, but much slower than once I did. This is mostly because of work and also because I have run out of most things to look for in Scotland.

I am asking about information regarding my own birth certificate. I would like to know this: if I order it from Scotland's People would it be a copy of the original certificate or what I already have, which is a detailed extract entitled "Extract of an Entry in the Registry of Births"?

The reason I ask is this - my parents had long ago somehow lost my original birth certificate, so when we wanted to return to Scotland in 1974 for a visit they applied for the birth records for us all. They received the above doument for all of us, which was good enough to have our passports renewed, renew our visas and up until now was good enough to prove for anything else, including my marriage.

As I am looking after my mother's affairs these days (she has dementia) I recently had to 'prove' who I am for important documents, and the first response from them was that my record was merely an 'extract' so not good enough. They have later renegotiated this but it made me think about it in more detail and a desire to have an original if it is different.

I thought my extract was remarkbly detailed, compared to the 1/4 page slip of a thing thing we get for extracts in Australia. So, can anyone please advise me if it is worth getting?

Thanks for reading!

Nina
Researching: Easton ( Renfrewshire, Dunbarton and Glasgow), Corr (Londonderry and Glasgow), Carson (Co. Down, Irvine, Ayrshire and Glasgow), Logan (Londonderry and Glasgow)

WilmaM
Posts: 1870
Joined: Fri Dec 17, 2004 10:46 am
Location: Falkirk area

Re: My Birth Certificate

Post by WilmaM » Thu Mar 23, 2023 2:16 pm

Hi Nina,
nice to 'see' you again :)

All our 'Birth certificates' are extracts of the legal documents - which are kept in NHR Edinburgh.

I have my son's to hand at the top it states:
Extract of an Entry in a REGISTER of BIRTHS
(Section 37(2) of the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages ( Scotland) Act 1965)
Then the Certificate Number
after that are the pertinent details
District Name & Number, Year, Entry Number
Then his actual details and the signature of the Registrar who completed the entry.
At the bottom is a further date and signature of the Registrar who extracted those details
[ in his case the same date and person as it is his original]
On any further 'extracts' the date and signature will reflect when that document was produced.

So whoever said yours wasn't good enough - wasn't good enough at their job! as we can't carry around the original volume from NRH!

Here we have to pay for the full extract version, but the free version given at initial registration will be on the same paper , now A4, but with parents names etc missed out, just registration details plus names, date time and place of birth.
Wilma

ninatoo
Posts: 1221
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2005 10:42 am
Location: Australia

Re: My Birth Certificate

Post by ninatoo » Fri Mar 24, 2023 5:03 am

Hi there Wilma! Nice to see you're still here too!

Thank you so much for the detailed reply. Mine sounds the same, except that it refers to the 1965 act at the bottom.

After it was rejected it was revised by someone else, and she said it was absolutely fine with it. Whew! I was stressing, as having researched and seen what we have I felt sure that it was the officially recognised record.

Hope your research is going well! I have moved beyond what I can find online for the most part and also into Ireland so things have been slow. Every now and then I find something new, so I keep looking, haha!

Nina
Researching: Easton ( Renfrewshire, Dunbarton and Glasgow), Corr (Londonderry and Glasgow), Carson (Co. Down, Irvine, Ayrshire and Glasgow), Logan (Londonderry and Glasgow)

WilmaM
Posts: 1870
Joined: Fri Dec 17, 2004 10:46 am
Location: Falkirk area

Re: My Birth Certificate

Post by WilmaM » Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:31 am

Yes, there was further blurb at the bottom of his 2001 certificate.
It's funny my daughter, born a few years before has a totally different layout to her brothers' and my husband's is slightly different, in format and layout, from mine. It's interesting in itself how the paper copies have evolved.

My research is filling out as access to different documents improves and more comes on-line.
I've infected my daughter with the genealogy bug - so she is going through my 20 year old trees and fine tuning them.
She takes a different approach to me but gets the results.

Ireland is a whole new ball game, but https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/ ... search.jsp has helped.
Wilma

AndrewP
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Location: Edinburgh
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Re: My Birth Certificate

Post by AndrewP » Fri Mar 24, 2023 12:25 pm

My birth certificate that I have at home is an extract. As I was born a [very] little earlier than the 1965 Act that Wilma referred to, the heading says "EXTRACT ENTRY OF BIRTH: 17 & 18 Victoria Cap. 80, § 37". So that refers back to The Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages (Scotland) Act 1854 (1854 being split across the 17th and 18th years of Queen Victoria's reign).

Chapter 80, Section 37 is as follows: "XXXVII. When any Entry of a Birth shall be made in a Register, upon the Information of any Person required to give Information under this Act, the Registrar on making such Entry shall give or transmit by Post to the Informant, within Two Days after the Date of the Entry, an Extract thereof; without Payment of any Fee, under a Penalty not exceeding Forty Shillings in case of Failure."

Despite that, I am a 1960s child, not 1860s. The extract is typewritten, so is not a photocopy of the original that I think I would get if I applied for a new extract today. I have seen a scanned copy of the original handwritten document in New Register House. As with all birth certificates of that era (up to 1971, I think) it was one of three on a page. I believe an extract would be a narrow strip photocopy showing only the headings and my section of the page. From 1972, all Scottish birth, marriage or death certificates have been a whole page, so there is no hiding references to someone else on that page as mine would be.

All the best,

AndrewP

ninatoo
Posts: 1221
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2005 10:42 am
Location: Australia

Re: My Birth Certificate

Post by ninatoo » Wed May 10, 2023 10:15 am

Thank you all so much for replying.

I am glad I asked about this as I may have tried to get the 'proper' certificate, but it looks like that is what I have.

We're very lucky to be Scottish, I think!
Researching: Easton ( Renfrewshire, Dunbarton and Glasgow), Corr (Londonderry and Glasgow), Carson (Co. Down, Irvine, Ayrshire and Glasgow), Logan (Londonderry and Glasgow)

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