of the year (March, June, September and December) in which the event was registered, and registration was usually within six weeks of the event.
Births record both parents’ full names and father’s occupation.
Marriages give ages of both parties, residences and occupations (many women’s occupations are left blank, even if they actually worked very hard!), and names and occupations of fathers.
Deaths state name and address of an informant – often this will be a close relative. Deaths to June 1969 state age at death, and thereafter the date of birth.
The indexes are with the Registrar General, at the Family Records Centre, but this is due to close. They are online at www.genesreunited.com and www.findmypast.com. A single index to the periods 1866–1920 and 1984–2002 is at www.familyrelatives.org, and an almost complete index for 1837–1901 is at www.freebmd.org.uk. You can order records from the Registrar General at www.gro.gov.uk or 0845 603 7788. You must purchase certificates – the information isn’t released any other way – at £7.00 each, but if you know a detail that will definitely appear on the record, such as a father’s forename, you can have the record checked and receive a partial refund if the document you ordered turns out to be the wrong one.
Censuses
British censuses have been taken from 1801, though only a handful before 1841, as detailed in my Collins Tracing your Family History, are any use to genealogists. The 1841 census lists everyone in each household, with occupations and ages rounded down to the nearest five years (someone aged 29 would be listed as 25). Those born in Ireland are marked ‘I’, those from Scotland ‘S’, whilst those born in England and Wales answered ‘Y[es]’ or ‘N[o]’ to the question ‘were you born in this county?’. From 1851, precise ages, relationships to the head of household and places of birth are stated. Those within mainland Britain are usually accurate down to parish level, but the Irish-born are usually just recorded as ‘Ireland’. The censuses from 1881 are more likely to give an Irish county or even parish: it’s worth seeking Irish immigrants in all possible censuses.
Unfortunately, many Irish migrants to mainland Britain viewed census takers with great suspicion, so claimed to have been born wherever they were living: the antidote is to seek them in several censuses, hoping to find the truth. The 1911 census will be released in 2012, that for 1921 in 2022 and so on according to the 100-year secrecy rule.
Censuses are at the Family Records Centre (soon to be moved to TNA), and are fully indexed and available online at www.genesreunited. com and www.ancestry.com, with transcripts of the 1881 census at www.familysearch.org.
1911 census
Before 2012, the 1911 census can be searched for specific addresses for £45 per search. See www.national archives. gov.uk/1911census for more details.
Directories
Directories existed in England from the 17th century, becoming very detailed and widespread from the mid-19th century onwards. They list very few Irish labourers, but are useful for locating and tracking the movements of the slightly better off.
Religious registers
Anglican parish registers started in 1538, though few survive before 1600. Most are in County Record Offices and many – not all – are indexed at www.familysearch.org. Transcripts of a good number are at the SoG.
Protestants from Northern Ireland are more likely to appear in registers of Presbyterian chapels. Presbyterianism was widespread in England during the mid-17th century but, though made legal in 1698, it rapidly lost ground to Methodism in the next century. Surviving registers are mostly indexed in www.familysearch.org with the originals in TNA series RG 10, as described in D.J. Steel, Sources for Nonconformist Genealogy and Family History (Phillimore for SoG, 1973). More information can be sought at United Reformed Church Archives.
Most Irish immigrants were Catholics. Catholicism survived Henry VIII’s 16th-century Reformation, but rapidly dwindled to a hard core of nobles, gentry and their tenants. Since 1791 Catholic chapels were legalised: in many cases the first ones built in towns – Bradford, Halifax and Rotherham, for example – were for Irish famine migrants. Priests tended to be the younger sons of the surviving English Catholic gentry, many of them Lancastrian: it was not until the 20th century that the Irish Catholic priest (usually with a hip-flask of whiskey secreted in his cassock) became a familiar figure in England.
Catholic marriages
English Catholic baptisms seldom list addresses, or fathers’ occupations, but during the 19th century many marriage registers from areas influenced by Continental priests, especially in London, started listing parents’ residences, many of which were back in Ireland. Numerous Catholic marriages in Liverpool are indexed at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/˜hibernia/mar/mar.htm. The late Fr. Godfrey Anstruther’s Catholic Marriage Index at the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, Canterbury, has been fully transcribed by Peter Steward of the Parish Register Transcription Society. It covers mainly London and Essex, from the earliest date of the registers (c. 1700) to about 1880, with some entries up to 1942. It is full of Irish families, for example:
12 June 1859 at Commercial Road, London, by W. Kelly Phillip Noble of 42 Berner Street, son of Henry and Mary Noble of Scherwin, Germany, married Joanna McGonigle of 161 Georges Street, daughter of James and Mary McGonigle of Kilrush, Clare, Ireland, witnesses Joseph Noble and Margaret Hughes.
Registers are usually with the relevant church. All are catalogued by M. Gandy, Catholic Missions and Registers 1700–1880 (M. Gandy, 1993) in six volumes covering England, Wales and Scotland, and his Catholic Parishes in England, Wales & Scotland; an Atlas (M. Gandy, 1993). The major 19th century ones, such as those in Lancashire (where Catholicism had survived more comprehensively, and to which vast numbers of Irish immigrants came), have been published by the Catholic Record Society.
In 1853, municipal cemeteries were established and many Catholics chose to be buried there rather than, as hitherto, in Anglican graveyards. Catholic priests could perform their ceremonies there, recording details in their own burial (or, more correctly, death) registers. In addition, look out for confirmation registers, lists of prayers for anniversaries of deaths, and lists of parishioners, called status animarium (‘state of souls’).
Newspapers
Newspapers started in 17th-century London and became widespread on a local level in the 19th century. Local papers are best sought in local archives where they are sometimes indexed. The best collection of local, national and foreign papers, including Catholic ones, is at the British Library Newspaper Library, catalogued at www.bl.uk/collections/newspapers.html. Announcements concerning everything from medal recipients to bankrupts appear in the London Gazette (1665-present), Gentleman’s Magazine (1731–1868) and The Times (1785-present), the latter indexed in The Times Digital Archive, available in several good libraries including Guildhall Library, London.
Catholics newspapers include The Tablet (1840) and The Universe (1860). In addition, James Peter Coghlan (1732–1800), a London printer, filched The Laity’s Directory publishing title from its founder, James Marmaduke,
