I know a lot of you will already know this, but for those who don’t…
The General Register Office website has made available reduced cost instant-access digital images of selected birth and death entries.

The ‘certificates’ available through this new Online View Digital Image Sevice are as follows:
* Birth entries from 1837 up to 100 years ago
* Death entries from 1837 to 1887

When you place an order using the GRO’s online indexes, where this new service is available (that is, for the year-spans indicated above), a new option will appear for ‘Digital Image’. Just click on the ‘button’.

These digital images cost just £2.50 each.

All the information you need to be able to order and retrieve your images is to be found in the GRO’s Online View Digital Image Service Guide.

There is a clear statement that these digital images have no “evidential” value. A paper certified copy is still required for official purposes. Examples given in the statement include ‘applying for a passport or driving licence, or where required to give notice of marriage/civil partnership’. None of these seem entirely applicable here! But in our research I can imagine someone requiring a certificate to evidence nationality of a great grandparent, or to demonstrate generational ancestral connection.

What you get
The digital image you’ll receive is just the extract from the GRO’s central register, nothing more. So looking at the example below, which is a full, certified copy, you get a lot of important wrap-around information. When you take advantage of the new instant-access digital download all you get is the image in that central section, which is extracted from the GRO Death Register.

I really like having the official document, certainly for my direct line and anyone else whose story I’m following – but that’s expensive and I’m gradually buying only the ones I need. However, I decided this would be a great way to get information about causes of death for all the siblings who died in infancy over that fifty year period, 1837-1887, so I’ve made a start on that.

Remember though that even the full certified copy of a Birth, Marriage or Death certificate is still only a secondary source if you purchase it from the GRO. The original is kept at the local Registrar’s Office. (I wrote about this in a blog for the Pharos Tutors website, that you’ll find [here] )

As soon as your online payment goes through you can click on a link to see the image. I found it took a few minutes before I could actually download it to my computer.

Having done that it seemed to me there was some additional essential information I really did need to be able to record and cite this effectively, so I created a template in Photoshop that I can use every time I download one of these. It includes:

• Title, making clear this is a digital download, since this does not have the same standing in law as a certified copy
• Column headings describing the content of each column
• The digital image
• The GRO reference, including year, quarter, district, volume and page
• The date I downloaded the digital image

This information transforms a useful digital image into a ‘source’, decribing what it is, and details of precisely where the original information is to be found, ensuring that anyone who wants to check my research in the future can find it again.

Having done this I’m still trying to decide if I’d be happy to have all my ancestors’ death certificates in this format. After all, for the cost of buying two of the full, certified copy versions I can get nine of these, and set into my template they don’t look so bad…..

If you’ve downloaded any of these instant access digital Birth or Death certificates, I hope you’ve found lots of interesting information.