Death certificate queries

[Sundaynightterrors]

What does a GRO number look like? I need to give one to order my great uncles death certificate but don’t really know what I am looking for?
also how do you afford death certificates and birth certificates as the one I am trying to order is £12.50 and I could spend a small fortune ordering family very.

Go onto the FreeBMD website (ignore the ads) and put in the details for your relative in the search box. That will give you a list of matches and you choose the appropriate one. The answer will give the name of the registration district and some alpha numeric figures, for instance 6c 126. You also need to make a note of the quarter, eg March, June etc. Registrations from Jan to Mar will be in the March quarter of that year, and so on. Sometimes there's a slight crossover if the event was registered at the very end of the quarter so it might appear in the next one.

Make sure you only use the official GRO website for ordering certificates, and not any others.

Forgot to mention, you can ask for digital copies instead of paper ones, and that is cheaper.

Agree it does get expensive, particularly if you have a relative with a common name and there are a few possibilities. I am struggling to find my Grandfather’s certificate for this reason. If you do get the right certificate there can be a lot of information on it though, it’s upsetting but also helpful.

There are usually 3 price options. Cheapest is the automatic digital scan - this is a scan of the register entry, doesn't include column headings but should have all the details you need for research purposes. It hasn't been checked by a person so some are hard to read or not correctly lined up (in which case you can get a refund).

Next is a PDF version of the certificate - contains all the info you'd get on a paper cert, just not printed.

The £12.50 is for an actual paper certificate, which you don't really need.

Just to add to the above answers, digital images and pdfs are only available for deaths up until 1957. If the death is after that date then you still need to pay for the paper certificate.

You can search for free on the GRO website for both birth and death certificates.

Go to the GRO website

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/

and choose 'Order certificates online'

You will then need to register and create a free account.

After you have logged in then choose 'Search the GRO Indexes'

Choose 'Death' and then the year the death was registered - you can search for +/- 2 years either side.

You then need to enter at least the surname and sex.

You can enter other information that you have to narrow down the search.

For example, a relative of mine who died in 1946 had a fairly common surname.

Searching for his surname in 1946 +/- 2 years there are 250 deaths recorded.

When I add in his first name, this comes down to five people. It also gives the age at death and location where the person's death was recorded.

Of those five people with the same name, one died in each of York, Manchester and Liverpool and two died in Gloucester. The year of death, the age and the location enabled me to identify which was the correct person.

You can then order the death certificate directly from the search results (the same for birth certificates as well).

Thanks everyone for your help. I have now been able to order the certificate I wanted using all your tips

Wah - just paid out £25 for two useless paper certificates! Why didn't I notice this option?!

@NestaVipaz True, but I prefer having an actual certificate in my hands. It is something that will still be around in a folder for my descendants in 100+ years' time, if they are interested that is. A digital copy won't be. I'm the same with books.

I'd be very happy with that too, but I only ordered them because I'd hit a roadblock and needed to get a paternal name. But both were no good! To make me feel better though, they were marriage certs, which don't seem to have a digital option, so I would have had to do it in any case.

I couldn’t see a digital option?

Digital images and pdfs are only available for deaths up until 1957. If the death is after that date then you still need to pay for the paper certificate.

It was 1945 so there should have been the digital option then but I definitely didn’t see it.

Do you mind if I ask where you were looking?

On the GRO website if you choose 'Order certificates online' and then after you login choose 'Order a Digital Image'

It will then take you to a page that says 'Search the GRO Online Indexes'

Enter the name, sex and year of death and it will come back with all the people who match those criteria.

If you then click on the correct person it will then come up with this

Order this entry as a: Certificate PDF Digital Image

You then just click on Digital Image and it takes you to the page to order it.

Once you've paid then it's available immediately.

[EDIT]

I just tried this with a relative who died in 1946 and it gave me this option

I have just looked again and I must have totally missed the digital choice when I did my order. What an idiot! 🙈