Timescales for receiving GRO certificates in a time of Covid?

[knittingaddict]

Does anyone know how long it is taking to receive birth/death/marriage certificates from the GRO at the moment?

I have started to digitise my family history stuff again after a gap of many years. While I was in the mood I joined Findmypast and inevitably got sidetracked by a very interesting development with my husband's great grandfather. I've sent off for one actual certificate to come in the post and 3 pdf copies of other certificates. The website says to expect delays, which is understandable, but what does this mean practically? I used the GRO index in all cases, so no searches necessary.

It's agonising having to wait. It looks like this man left his wife and 8 children and was living with another woman in 1891 as a married couple. Possibly they had 2 children and the woman died in child birth with the second. The first child was bought up by this man and his (saintly) wife and the second died shortly after birth. Paints a whole new picture of the hard working father of 9 that we have seen so far. We need to know!

I'm ordering a lot of certificates at the moment. I would say PDFs are taking a week to 10 days and hard copy through the post about 2 weeks. So, not excessive, but very frustrating, as you say!

Roughly 2 weeks, no more for copies of old certificates. Registering a death, it was just a few days.

That's not as bad as I was expecting, so thank you so much for the information.

I ordered a birth certificate from National Records of Scotland recently and although they had the blurb about extended times on their website, we had it the next day.

(Raised more questions than it answered, but isn't that always the way??)

Any know timeframes for wills? Also do you get a full copy of the original, transcript or summary?

Wills vary. I ordered three on 17 February and got one on the 22nd, one on the 26th, and I'm still waiting on the third. It doesn't seem to be related to how old they are. You get a PDF of a scan of the entire original will, as written, plus the grant of probate usually. They cost £1.50 and are completely fascinating! Cheap entertainment!

You can only order from the probate office for wills from 1858 onwards. There's a specialist on wills before 1858 speaking at the Family History Federation's trade show next month: www.fhf-reallyuseful.com/speaker-portfolio/.

Thanks, much quicker than I had imagined. I have accessed a pre1858 one but there must be an art to reading them - there was also a court case disputing it!

@RaspberryCoulis

I ordered a birth certificate from National Records of Scotland recently and although they had the blurb about extended times on their website, we had it the next day.

(Raised more questions than it answered, but isn't that always the way??)

We've already decided what the story is from one census year, the 1939 register and 4 birth/death certificates. My husband has a whole narrative in his head now. We will be very, very disappointed if the certificates don't back us up.

That should have said 4 birth/death index entries. We haven't even seen the actual certificates yet.

I called the wife saintly in the first post, but I actually think it says more about lack of choice for poor working class women in the 1800's.I don't think many women now would tolerate being abandoned with 8 children and then look after a child of the affair when the husband waltzes back in. He's been dead over 100 years now and I'm so annoyed with him.

Just to let you know that the paper copy arrived in the post yesterday. That's exactly one week from ordering, so I'm very happy with that.

Very happy that it helped to confirm our first thoughts.

That's great news. Always exciting when it turns out correct - I've hit a wall with some of my searches and it's so frustrating.

Yes the certificate I ordered was for DH's granny's birth. No father listed. No father suspected. His own dad never knew who his grandfather was.

Total brick wall.

Trying to convince FIL to take a DNA test but he's not keen.

@RaspberryCoulis your DH could take the test, matches will still show for him and if MIL takes one then it will be clear who is a maternal/paternal match.

Yup, 3 death cert PDFs today, exactly a week from ordering. And what a tale they tell.

[quote saffire]@RaspberryCoulis your DH could take the test, matches will still show for him and if MIL takes one then it will be clear who is a maternal/paternal match. [/quote]
Yeah I know. But it's always better to test the oldest generation possible. There are a lot of other issues though - the great granny was very young when she had the baby, she went on to have another baby with someone else and didn't marry him either, went on to marry eventually and have a son... it's all a bit confusing and I think FIL feels a lot of "shame" about it. I also think it's partly that he's just not that interested and thinks some things are best left in the past. There was some family story that the younger sister of the granny was abused or something, she certainly had some fairly serious MH problems and spent some time in a psychiatric ward. FIL makes guarded comments about how she had a "hard childhood" and the mother certainly upped sticks with her two small daughters and moved across the country.

I think he's worried about what they might have been running away from, it's a bit murky.

Ordered some wills today, hoping they will answer some questions and fill a few gaps.

Are they always £11 each?

Yes, it's a standard fee for England and Wales.

www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate

I ordered a birth certificate from GRO a couple of weeks ago and it arrived in about 5 days. Sadly, it didn't answer the question I was asking - just created more confusion 😀