Births, Marriages and Deaths
Registration Districts
Copies of the General Office Records (GRO) index are available on microfilm and these can be consulted in various provincial locations. For instance, in Yorkshire there are copies at the reference sections of the main libraries in Halifax, Kirklees (Huddersfield), Hull, Leeds, Northallerton and York. These are very popular, you may have to book a few days in advance.
The indices are arranged in quarters, ie MAR for January to March, JUN for April to June, SEP for July to September, and DEC for October to December. Don't forget that events were often registered some time after they occurred, so a birth in late March may not be registered until early April and thus appears in the JUN index.
These records are also available on-line at the GRO, FreeBMD, Ancestry(£), and Findmypast(£)
To use the GRO indices you really need to have a rough idea of the date of the event and a location. For the purposes of registration, the country is divided into districts. Each district has a code number. These codes were in Roman numerals from 1837 to 1851 and then in arabic numerals with letter subdivisions until 1946. The lower the number, the nearer to London or further south. The following table shows the district codes:
| 1837-1851 | 1852-1946 | Districts |
| I | 1a,*1b | London (Bloomsbury, St George Hanover Square, *St Giles, St Marylebone, *St Pancras, Westminster, St Martin, Strand) |
| II | *1b,1c,**1c | London (City, **Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, *Holborn, Mile End, **Newington, Poplar, **Rotherhithe, Stepney, Whitechapel) |
| III | *1a,**1b,3b | Middlesex (*Chelsea, *Clerkenwell, *Fulham, ** Hackney, *Kensington, *Hampstead, **Islington, rest of Middlesex) |
| IV | *1d,2a | Surrey (*Camberwell, *Lambeth, *Southwark, *Wandsworth, rest of Surrey) |
| V | *1d,2a | Kent (*Greenwich, *Lewisham, *Woolwich, rest of Kent) |
| VI | 3a,*3b | *Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire |
| VII | *2c | Sussex, East Hampshire (*Excl. Portsmouth) |
| VIII | *2b | S.W. Hampshire (*and Portsmouth area) |
| VIII | 5a | Dorset, Wiltshire |
| IX | 5c | Cornwall |
| $IX,X | 5b | Devon ($Plymouth, $Totnes, $Tavistock) |
| X,$XI | 5c | Somerset ($Bath, $Clutton, $Keynsham) |
| XI,$XVI | 6a | Gloucestershire ($Westbury on Severn) |
| XII | 4a | Essex and South Suffolk |
| XIII | 4b | Norfolk and North Suffolk |
| XIV | 3b | Cambridgeshire, Huntington |
| XIV | 7a | Lincolnshire |
| XV | 7a | Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Rutland |
| XV | 7b | Nottinghamshire |
| XVI | *3a,6d | *Oxfordshire, Warwickshire |
| XVII | 6b | Staffordshire |
| XVIII | 6a,*6c | *Worcestershire, Shropshire |
| XIX | *8a,7b | *Cheshire, Derbyshire |
| XX | 8b,*8c,**8d | South Lancashire (Liverpool, West Derby, Prescot; *Barton * Chorlton, *Warrington,; **Ashton, **Mancester, **Oldham, **Prestwich,**Salford) |
| XXI | *8b,**8c,8e | Rest of Lancashire (*Ormskirk,; **Bolton, **Bury, **Leigh, **Wigan);(Todmorden 9a) |
| $XXI,XXII | *9a,9c | South Yorkshire (West Riding) to Wakefield ($*Halifax, $*Saddleworth, *Huddersfield) |
| $XXII,XXIII | 9a,*9b,**9c | Rest of Yorkshire West Riding (*Leeds area, *Bradford, $*Dewsbury,; **Bramham, **Selby, **Tadcaster) |
| XXIII | 9d | Yorkshire East Riding (Hull, Beverley, Howden etc) |
| $XXIII,XXIV | 9d | Yorkshire North Riding ($Aysgarth) |
| XXIV | 10a | County Durham |
| XXV | 10b,*8e | Cumberland, Northumberland, Westmorland; (Lancashire: *Barrow in Furness, *Ulverstone) |
| XXVI | 6a | Herefordshire; Westbury, Glos. |
| XXVI | 11a | Carmarthenshire, Glamorgan, Monmouth, Pembroke |
| $XXVI,XXVII | 11b | Rest of Wales ($Brecknock, $Radnor) |