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 from England and Wales. 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 will place on the Internet Civil Registration index information. The main focus of the project is currently the seventy eight year period from 1837 to 1915. However, we will accept and hold more recent data.
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 and Ordering Birth Registration Certificates from England and Wales - Using the LDS Family History Center's Resources which includes examples of actual certificates. FreeBMD has its own pages, too, which repeat the links above amongst others.
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 may limit the total number to avoid overload). With the information provided from the results:
Event, Quarter & Year, Surname, First name(s), Registration District, Volume Number, Page Number, Submitter
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).
The FreeBMD database is available for search. NB The search facilities are not all operational at the moment. Extra facilities will be introduced.
Using volunteers throughout the world, the FreeBMD Project leadership (see FAQ 7 below) will co-ordinate 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 with the latest available data.
The co-ordinated extraction of Civil Registration index information will be performed under the guidance of the FreeBMD Project leadership. Extraction and data entry assignments will be planned and co-ordinated by the Project leaders and volunteer co-ordinators so the FreeBMD Project makes orderly progress towards its goal.
Data will also be accepted from previous extractions by those performing one-name studies.
Data will be 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 will be made available to assist with the task.
Ultimately, all data will be entered at least twice by independent transcribers in order to ensure correctness.
You think it's a long way to the chip shop... FreeBMD is big. Really big! It'll take a long time 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 the years 1837 to 1901 by the end of December 2007.
This target was substantially achieved in July 2005.
(Note: As at July 2005 there were still some odd gaps in events/quarters before 1902 but these were counterbalanced by completions in events/quarters after 1901).
By the end of September 2007 years 1837 to 1918 were substantially completed.
(Note: As at September 2007 there were still some odd gaps in events/quarters before 1919 but these were counterbalanced by completions in events/quarters after 1918).
Current estimates are that the years 1837-1921 will be substantially completed by December 2007.
It is expected the years 1837-1932 will be substantially completed by December 2008 and the years 1837-1942 by December 2009.
And finally…. current estimates are that the years 1837-1983 (the end of the transcribing element of the Project) will be completed by September 2013.
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, Number 1096940. The Deed of Trust can be viewed on-line.
All rights in the data will betransferred from the project leaders to the charitable trust once registration is complete.
The trustees of the trust are Graham Hart, Ben Laurie, Camilla von Massenbach, and David Mayall.
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, and ONS are involved in a project to computerise earlier records. However, at the present time, there is no indication that this new computerised index will render FreeBMD obsolete;
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.
All entries will be transcribed independently at least twice to ensure accuracy. We will happily accept some level of double keying as we go along. The "missing" sections will be tidied up in due course.
The copyright holders will grant permission.
The Data Protection Act 1998 only applies to information relating to living individuals. The vast majority of data held within FreeBMD at present does ot relate to living individuals, and is consequently outside the scope of the Data Protection Act. A small proportion of the GRO data held, and the personal details of our transcribers, does relate to living individuals, and FreeBMD is registered with the Information Commissioner, under reference number Z7436529.
In common with many websites FreeBMD uses revenue from advertisements to pay for the service provided. This link is to a facility that keeps track of advertisement leads, paying FreeBMD when these result in a "sale". The Privacy Policy for this facility is given here. An assessment (and simple explanation) by Computer Associates is given here.
Your virus software (presumably PC-cillin) has decided this consitutes Spyware. Regrettable TrendMicro (the publishers of PC-cillan) have not found it necessary to describe the threat supposedly posed by www.qksz(.)net in their Virus Encyclopedia (as of 30 Nov 2007).
It is up to you to decide if you agree or not that this is Spyware. If not you can make FreeBMD a "Trusted Site" and we understand the warnings will stop.
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 site 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 on the size of database FreeBMD has.
We will continue to monitor this issue but at the moment there is no proposal to change the phonetic search facility.
We would like to thank Brian Randell and Mark Howells for their hard work in producing this FAQ.
