Search - Frequently Asked Questions
Search - Frequently Asked QuestionsYou can print the results using the Print button on your browser.
This depends on your browser. You can sometimes use File/Save As to save the current page and view it later. However, with some browsers the Search page rather than the Results page is saved. An alternative is to use the offline/history facility of your browser to view pages you have visited, without being online. Select Work Offline in your browser, then open the History and select the FreeBMD site, and then the page you want to view.
You can also use the download facility - see here.
You must understand that FreeBMD is Work in Progress! We are still transcribing the indexes - you can see the progress on the progress charts - so your entries probably haven't been transcribed yet. Perhaps you would like to help in the transcribing? See how to join up.
Click on the 
button next to the entry and then click on the link
for submitting corrections. Note that corrections will only be accepted if you can show that the
entry is different from what is in the index; differences from other sources (such as a certificate)
will not be accepted.
Please see Finding the spouse
Please see Ordering Certificates.
This means that there is something wrong or unusual about the district name, volume or page, specifically one of the following:
You need to understand that almost all of the records in FreeBMD were transcribed by people who had no
interest in the actual entries themselves, they were giving their time and skill to provide a searchable index.
However, you may be fortunate and the transcriber may have been transcribing family records, for example.
To find out, click on the button next to the entry and then click on
the name of the transcriber. If an email address is given they may have an interest in the record; if there
is no email address then they do not have an interest in the record. Please note that in this latter case
there is no point in leaving a postem to try to contact them - the
person who transcribed the record is very unlikely to see it.
The information appears in a separate window. Unfortunately some browsers do not always bring this window to the foreground leaving you with the impression that nothing has happened. Look at the list of windows at the bottom of the screen and you should find the window you are looking for.
It changes the colours used for the background so that the names print better on a mono printer.
The entries in the differently shaded area come from different pages of the index. Even if the entries are consecutive pages we still mark them as if there is a gap, hence it is only a possible gap in the data. Eventually we will remove this ambiguity.
If the results page was displayed but there are no results (and no message saying no results were found) you are probably having problems with the use of JavaScript. We use JavaScript to make displaying the results more efficient but some browsers, even though they claim to support JavaScript, don't provide implementation sufficient to display the results. For example, some web TV systems fall into this category.
To get round this problem see How can I avoid using JavaScript?
You can look at the details of the number of searches that were done here. You will see that very few actually fail on the server.
The design of FreeBMD is such that we always return a result from a search - if the server is too busy we say so, if the search took too long we say so ... we don't just say nothing. If you are getting no response from your searches it is probably a communications problem between you and us, and most likely a problem within your ISP. We have been told of people living next door to each, but using different ISPs, who get very different responses times.
There are a number of limits that are imposed on searches in order to make sure one person does not stop other people searching by using all the capability of the system. The limits imposed are as follows:
You should use the Saved Search facility which enables you to see only those records added since you last did a search. See Saved Search Help for more information.
Saved Searches can only be viewed online. Enter the name of the file in the Saved Search box on the Search page and click on View Saved.
JavaScript is a system that runs within a browser to generate information more efficiently. Our search results page detects automatically if JavaScript can be used. However, there are some situations where you might want to display results without using JavaScript. To do this use the following to define a search http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl?js=0
Such cases are very common in the indexes, and usually indicate a person who was born illegitimate, but adopted the surname of her mother's husband (whether it was the father or not).
To take the above example, if Miss Bimrose had an illegitimate child, Sarah Jemima, that child would be Sarah Jemima BIMROSE. If Miss Bimrose then married Mr Bilton, it would be common for the child to go by the name of Sarah Jemima BILTON.
When Sarah married, she would be shown on her marriage certificate as Sarah Jemima BILTON otherwise BIMROSE, and the index will show her under both names.
Probably not. When the index was created, where the register was unclear two entries were created in the index. So in this case there is only one person, named either Teslar or Testar.
When you click on the Page, hold down the SHIFT key at the same time. This will cause the results to be displayed in a different window, leaving the original search results in their own window. To do the next spouse search just go back to the original window.
If you do a search specifying one or more districts (or counties) and then click on Revise Query you get this message below the district (or county) list. It is there to indicate to you that if you do the search again it will still be limited to those districts (or counties) and is necessary because the selected items may not be visible in the items displayed. The message does not change if you subsequently change the selection, for example to All Districts (or All Counties), which is why it says initially.
The download facility is explained here.
The meaning of the symbols that may appear next to the
button is as follows:
 | The scan from which the transcription was made is available for you to view. |
 | A comment has been attached to this entry by the transcriber. This may indicate what the transcriber thought the entry should contain, especially where the entry was unclear or inconsistent. |
 | There is a Postem
attached to the entry. A Postem is a message from a researcher about
the entry, perhaps indicating additional information available or
seeking to get in touch with people with an interest in the entry.
See the Postem help for more
information about Postems; click on the
button to view the Postem associated with this entry. |
 | The entry has been added since the last update. See the home page for when that was. |
 | The entry is a System Entry,
that is an entry that is not in the index but has been added to the
FreeBMD database to correct an apparent error in the index. Click on
the button for more information including
details of any entry this System Entry may replace.
|
 | There is a System Entry
linked to this entry; click on the
button for more information including a link to the System Entry.
|
Our volunteers continuously transcribe more entries but we only update the database about once a month since it is a big job to update over 100 million records. The date of the latest database update can be found on the home page.
There are a number of ways that you can tell where new entries have been added.
next to an entry means it has
probably been added since the last update. The uncertainty is due to the
fact that if the record has changed, e.g. the page number has been corrected, it
will be marked as an addition.
The percentage figure indicates how much of that quarter we have transcribed so far. The full coverage charts are given here. Please note, however, that due to limitations in the data available this figure is only accurate to within 2, i.e. a given percentage of 84% means between 82% and 86% of the entries have been transcribed.
To report a missing entry you need to submit a correction to the
immediately preceding entry which you known since you have
looked up the scan. Search for this entry and click on the
button next to it, then click
to make a correction. Enter the details of the missing entry in
the correction form and in the source field put "According to
FreeBMD scan the current entry is OK, missing entry shown".
button, why are there several entries shown
that are slightly different from the search results?
The button shows you the actual transcriptions of the entry and
there may be more than one transcription for an entry in the search results because it has
been transcribed more than once. FreeBMD transcribes each page more than once to improve the
accuracy of the transcription. There may be differences between these transcriptions for
the following reasons:
If you click on the district name ("St Olave" in this case) it will give you more information about the district, including the name that it appears under in the district list. In the case of "St Olave" it tells you that it is an alternative name for Bermondsey which is the name in the district list. The issue of alternative district names is explained here.
Very occasionally records may be deleted from the database, for example if the record is erroneous or in the wrong quarter. However, by far the most likely cause is that you have done a search putting the first name in the Surname box and the surname in the First Names(s) box.
Last Updated 29th January 2010
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