How do I find out whether someone is still living or has died?

Poke them with a stick

Ok thanks. Good to know!

Yes they do, ancestry has an index of deaths up to 2025.

I once knew someone who wanted to know if someone she hadn't seen in years was still alive - without knowing his DOB, names of relatives, whether he had a middle name etc - because she wanted to know if it was too late to report him for molesting her in childhood. We don't know what's going on here.

Not everyone is registered with the NHS and there are people who don't want to have their data on record...

But it's the doctor who puts the name on the certificate, when they're recording cause of death - and they'll have that accurately from the medical records. The person registering the death just gives deceased's place of birth and their own name and their relationship to the deceased.

Oh, I think it's very much an Irish thing. The North of Ireland has the 'Funeral Times' website but it doesn't have the pages of commiserations from loads of people.

How has the UK not got an equivalent of rip.ie

Someone is missing a business trick surely? Or is it just an Irish thing to need to know about every person that has died recently in the county?

Somerset House hasn’t held records for decades. It’s GRO now.

I’ve tried to do this,not proving easy. Life long friend of my mums, literally since about 4 , mum died 3 years ago and we know her friend was in a nursing home but don’t know which one,phone numbers mum had for her family don’t work, we just want to know if she is still alive.

No she's not.

Just read between the lines.

I had someone contact me on LinkedIn once asking if someone who used to work for my organisation had died, as they were still registered on there on my company name. They had actually left years earlier, but didn’t update their profile. I guess this won’t help you if they are in their late 70s though, as wouldn’t have worked for some time. But you never know, someone might have kept in touch and know.

If they died in England and wales you can use the .gov.uk site. Not uk wide.

My mum was friends with two other ladies. Let’s call them Nancy and Heather (not real names) Flat shared etc. Then DM married DF and the two moved back to their home cities around 400 miles apart. It was my DM birthday and not received a card and a gift voucher from one of them.

DM contacted Heather and asked if heard anything from Nancy recently. No. Plus it was her birthday 5 weeks after DM. Both agreed to send a card. The card that my DM sent was returned with letter box taped off. Strange.

Heather put the wrong door number on which was Nancy’s neighbour. As Heather used address stickers with her phone number on them. Nancy’s neighbour rang Heather and told her what happened. Nancy slipped down the stairs as wearing flip flops. Hit her head at the bottom of the stairs on the hard floor. Wasn’t discovered until a few days later.

I don’t know if we have ever heard about Nancy if Heather didn’t put the wrong address on the envelope

I was in a similar position. Around 2005 an elderly relative suddenly ceased contact with everyone, including a similarly aged relative she had previously been close to. She had moved a few years previously to be closer to her siblings and it would have involved an overnight stay for us to go and check. She had family close by but they were quite insular so we assumed she had died and they didn't contact us. We continued to send cards for a few years.

A few years ago I tried looking to see when she had died. I found the electoral rolls for her area were online (ancestry I think) and found she was mentioned under the address we'd known until about 2012. I also discovered the online gro index. You can only search for death records in two year windows, so I started from about 2010 and went up until the present. Nothing under her surname that was anywhere near close. Another dead end, and we wondered whether she had married. No joy looking for obituaries or even wedding notices!

A few months ago I was on the gro index once more and had a look for her - this time a hit. She had died 18 months previously, was registered under both her first name and the name she had used for most of her life. She had died a couple of months after her sister in law who she'd been close to for decades, and who often wondered what had happened to her - we had all assumed she'd died at least a decade before.

Sorry, bit of an essay, but those were the steps I used and had an answer in the end.

Sorry for the confusion. I wasn't answering the op. I was responding to another poster on the thread.

I found out that one of my grandfathers had died 3 years earlier by phoning a relative (who would have known him but who I didn’t really know myself) & basically just asking her about him. Then I had to tell my Dad, who was one of his sons. That was not pleasant.

I found out that a great uncle had died by searching on Ancestry - there was a death certificate registered.

Sounds like an abusive boyfriend or stalker searching for his ex. Creepy as fuck.

If the person didn't want anything to do with you, leave it alone.

Are you sure they were born in the U.K.? If so, try varying your search in case their name is listed in a slightly different way, eg John Jack Jones might be listed as John Jones or Jack Jones - that kind of thing. You can also search Births on other websites to see if you can find them.

I found my late half-uncle in London on GRO but he had an unusual name and I knew his year of birth. Not so easy when you're looking for a Margaret Jones or a William Smith...

I've just used the general register link from above, registered and put in the last date i knew a person was alive and their name (it allowed a +/- 2 years of the assumed death date) I could see straight away the right person I was looking for (knew the council which would have registered them) could you try that?

General Register Office - Online Indexes - Search the GRO Online Indexes

Honestly I don’t know how you manage without rip.ie website we use in Ireland

We use the .gov.uk site where we can see if a death has been registered.

I don't know why people are making this so complicated. If the person died in the UK, the death will have been registered and can be searched for on the .gov site and a certificate ordered. As can births and marriages/civil partnerships.