Printable version. You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader which you can download FREE from Adobe's website (link opens in a new window).

The Newsletter of the Family Records Centre (FRC)
Issue 29 Winter 2005 (16th online edition)

Closure Dates

Friday 25 March to Monday 28 March (Easter)
Monday 2 May (May Bank Holiday)
Monday 30 May (Spring Bank Holiday)
Monday 29 August (August Bank Holiday)
Monday 26 December to Wednesday 28 December (Christmas)
Monday 2 January 2006 (New Year)

We're Talking To You

We are pleased to announce an extensive programme of family history talks for 2005 covering a variety of topics. The highlight of the next three months is a double-header in March featuring Irish research. Following the success of the Saturday talks last year, we are now holding talks for beginners on the first Saturday of every month.

The full programme is as follows (Saturday talks in italics):

• 5 Feb - Introduction to Family History
• 8 Feb - Tracing Your Ancestors at London Metropolitan Archives
• 22 Feb - Tracing Your Ancestors at the FRC
• 1 Mar - Online Databases for Family Historians
• 5 Mar - Family History on the Internet
• 8 Mar - The Secrets of the FRC
• 15 Mar - English Records for Irish Family History
• 22 Mar - Irish Records for Irish Family History
• 29 Mar - The Making of the GRO's Birth, Marriage & Death Indexes
• 2 Apr - Census Returns Online
• 5 Apr - Census Returns Online
• 12 Apr - Tracing First World War Ancestors
• 19 Apr - The FamilySearch Website
• 26 Apr - Tracing Your Ancestors at the FRC
• 3 May - The Guild of One-Name Studies

Tickets for all our talks are free and can be collected from the New Customers Desk on the first floor on the day. Please note that spaces for the talks are limited. Tickets will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis and cannot be booked in advance. Tuesday talks take place at 2pm in the Meetings Room on the first floor while our Saturday talks start at 11:30 am.

Help! I'm stuck...

Hit a brick wall with your research? Can't think what to do next? Don't panic - the FRC is here to help you! From mid-February, for a trial period of six weeks, we will be holding one-to-one Family History Surgeries. The sessions will last half an hour starting at 11:00, 11:30, 12:00 and 12:30 on the following Tuesdays:

15 February, 22 February, 1 March, 8 March, 15 March and 22 March

Sessions must be booked in advance. Please phone 0208 392 5300 or email us at: frc@nationalarchives.gov.uk

Customer Survey

A big thank you to all those who took part in our Customer Survey in December. We are delighted to report that over 96% of you rated the overall service at the FRC as 'Good' or 'Excellent'. The full results of the survey can be found in the Your FRC section of our website.

Busy times at the FRC

Visitor numbers to the FRC continue to rise with an increase of 15% in the last three months of 2004 compared to the same period the previous year. We strongly suspect that this has something to do with last Autumn's 'surprise' hit TV series 'Who Do You Think You Are?'. Plans are already underway for a second series to be broadcast in 2006.

Open Meeting November 2004

The following is a selection of the questions raised by customers at the last FRC open meeting:

Q. The hand-written BMD indexes are sometimes very difficult to read and sometimes the volume and page numbers are illegible; will they be replaced by something easier to use?
A. Staff at the ground floor Customer Service Desk can contact Southport where individual problems of this kind can often be resolved. Under the changes proposed in the Registration Review the historic records will be digitised over the next few years and the hand-written and printed indexes will be no longer needed.

Q. Why are there errors on some marriage certificates and can the details be corrected?
A. There are inevitably some errors and omissions in the central records, due to the way they were created from hand-written copies of the original church registers. These are corrected as and when they become known.

Q. What is the difference between the first floor Internet Access Point (IAP) and the PCs within the reading room?
A. The IAP is there primarily to enable customers to do quick internet searches and to use web-based email. There are no printing facilities and there is no staff assistance. The PCs within the reading room are for genealogical research, and there are printers and a help desk. They cannot be used to access email.

Q. When will the death duty registers 1858-1903 be made available at the FRC?
A. These records are currently only available as original documents at TNA Kew. They are potential candidates for future microfilming and/or digitisation.

Q. Will the FRC be running online training sessions like those which are held at Kew?
A. We are currently planning a series of small hands-on sessions about family history sources on the internet. These will be advertised in advance and held in the first floor reading room.

Q. How does the FRC User Group represent the interests of customers?
A. The User Group meets four times per year and exists primarily to represent professional users of the FRC, such as professional genealogists, commercial research companies and academic users. Open meetings such as this are held twice a year to provide an opportunity for unaffiliated users to make their views known.

New Books in the Reference Area

We have added a number of new books to our collection including:

• The Jewish Victorian - Genealogical Information from the Jewish Newspapers (2 volumes, 1861-1870, 1871-1880)
• Using Computers for Genealogy
• Tracing Your First World War Ancestors
• Oxford Dictionary of London Place Names
• Irregular Marriages Recorded in the Berwick Advertiser and Other Border Papers 1808-1864

News From The GRO, Southport

Modernising Civil Registration

The Parliamentary Committees, who have been considering proposals to reform the law on registering births and deaths and the structure of the local registration service, published their reports in December.

The conclusions state that the proposals are not appropriate for the regulatory reform order procedure. Both reports have been published on the UK Parliament website: www.parliament.uk.

The proposals, to modernise civil registration, were originally presented to Parliament in July 2004 after a period of consultation with a wide range of interested parties.

They would have allowed members of the public to register births and deaths online, in person and by telephone and to use any register office, in England and Wales, to register births and death. The proposals would also have transferred responsibility for the delivery of face-to-face services to local authorities and provided new arrangements for access to births and deaths registration information.

It is expected that the Government's proposals on modernising marriage law will be presented to Parliament once a further period of consultation with interested parties has been completed.

Although disappointed by the outcome, GRO remains committed to reform and modernisation.

Online Ordering

GRO's online ordering system continues to go from strength to strength. Due to a combination of seasonal increases and the popularity of the BBC series 'Who Do You Think You Are?' we saw daily order levels rise from an average of approximately 2,000 certificates per day in September to a peak of almost 4,500 in October. Following the Christmas 'lull' this trend appears to be continuing and applications received online now represent over 65% of the total GRO receipts.

This dramatic increase in work had a major impact on turnaround times for the despatch of online orders. To address this problem, over 40 additional staff have recently been recruited and weekend overtime has been instigated. Customers can expect a return to normal services over the next few weeks.

GRO Service Targets

Performance is monitored against a number of targets on a monthly basis. The following table details our performance over the period October to December 2004 in just some of the areas monitored. The target for each area is for 95% of applications to be processed within the set number of days.

Figures have been rounded up to the nearest whole number.

Although the despatch levels are disappointing this has been in the main due to the high level of orders received in October and November 2004. In total 435,094 applications were made during this period in comparison to 351,685 applications made within the previous quarter. Progress is now being made to reduce backlogs.

General Register Office Open Days 2004

This was the fifth year that the General Register Office, at Smedley Hydro, Trafalgar Road opened its doors to the public. Over 350 people attended over two Saturdays in November. Attractions included a tour of the working areas, with demonstrations of the certificate production process and opportunities to view exhibitions from the General Register Office departments and other invited external Family History organisations.

There were also talks from the Registration Review team, Overseas department and Online Ordering section.

News From TNA, Kew

New Online Service

1891 and 1881 Census for England & Wales - a co-branded service with MyFamily Inc.

For the first time, fully searchable indexes and scans of original documents from the 1881 and 1891 censuses for England and Wales are available online at: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/census

We are expecting the 1871 census returns to be available in early February and over the next two years all the other censuses from 1841 will be added. Searching the database is free. You can view the original census records and transcripts for a small fee. It is planned that the 1871, 1881 and 1891 census records will soon be free of charge if you are accessing them at The National Archives in Kew or here at the Family Records Centre.

Movers and Shakers: Geoffrey Chaucer to Elton John

A free exhibition at The National Archives, Kew until 31 May 2005

A fascinating tour of the lives of "movers and shakers" from the last 750 years, as seen through the documents left in our care. A rare chance to see:

• Henry VIII's handwritten comments on his divorce from Catherine of Aragon
• an original engraving of Wren's St Paul's before it had been completed
• evidence that Karl Marx was prevented from securing British citizenship
• the dramatic letter announcing that the code for life, DNA, has been discovered by Crick and Watson
• proof that Elton John started life as Reginald Dwight

Talks & Events

Elizabeth I - the queen and the woman
Thursday 10 February, 7.00-8.00pm
Alison Weir, author of Elizabeth the Queen, talks about one of England's most popular and enigmatic monarchs.

Wren's London
Thursday 10 March, 7.00-8.00pm
Liza Picard, author of Restoration London, discusses the social history of the capital during the time of Christopher Wren.

Tickets for all talks £5 (£4 concessions)

Make Your Mark!
Wednesday 16, Thursday 17 and Friday 18 February, 2.00-3.30pm

Today it's the signature that tells us who a letter is from but that was not the only way of identifying the sender in the past. Come to our family workshops and find out how some of our movers and shakers made their mark. See some of the seals from The National Archives on display and create your own to take home with you. Free but booking is essential.

To reserve a ticket for a talk or a place in the workshop, please phone 020 8392 5202 or visit: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/events.

Further information

If you would like more information about any of the items in this newsletter please telephone us on 0845 603 7788 (GRO enquiries) or 0208 392 5300 (TNA enquiries). You can also email us at:

frc@nationalarchives.gov.uk

To subscribe to the electronic version of the Family Record please send an email with the word 'Subscribe' in the subject heading to:

FRC-Newsletter@nationalarchives.gov.uk

The Family Record is jointly produced by the General Register Office (GRO) and The National Archives