Death Cerificates

[mutley]

Can anyone tell me if soldiers that "died at home" during the war receive a normal death certificate. If so where did the death certificate go to, the Army or the local parish records. Thanks in advance.

[Andrew Marshall]

Mutley

If you go to the Family Records Office all those who died have a death certificate, it is in a seperate section to non military death certificates. Failing the ability to go there you can request them to get the information for you but the more details the less cost.

http://www.familyrecords.gov.uk/

Try this site

Regards

Andrew

[john w.]

Can reinforce that, have been to that section, they are large index ledgers and you look through them get the details and request the certificates in the normal way...

Did that for my dad...

John

[Guest Simon Bull]

Mutley

(1) Subject to issues relating to separate registration schemes in Scotland and Ireland, (as to which see below) all death certificates are available through the Family Records Centre in London - they have a website which does not contain the records or their indexes, but gives information about the Centre at http://www.familyrecords.gov.uk/frc/.

(2) Death certificates relating to solders who died abroad (from any Regiment, English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish) are indexed in a sort of sub-series (relating to the First World War) of the Deaths Overseas section of the index to certificates. The certificate you will get if you order it, having located the entry you want in the index, will be relatively uninformative, just telling you name, number, rank, Regiment (sometimes Battalion) or Corps, age, country of birth, date of death, place of death (this may just say, e.g., France); cause of death (this may even just say "assumed", and never gives a medical cause - just killed in action, died of wounds etc). I am not sure whether there are separate Scottish and Irish series in Scotland and Ireland relating to soldiers whose home residence was in Scotland or Ireland - perhaps someone else could help re this.

(3) Death certificates for soldiers who die in England and Wales (Scotland and Ireland are available by different methods which I am not familiar with) are normal "civil" certificates, obtained by searching the standard index of death certificates. The civil certificate is, in my experience, much more informative, telling you exactly when and where the soldier died; his name, sex and age; (usually, although this information is somewhat variable) his home address and battalion and regiment; the medical cause of death (e.g. shrapnel wound to spine causing paraplegia) and the informant to the registrar (in instances i have seen this has been either a medical officer or a family member).

Hope this is helpful.

Good luck!

Simon Bull.

[mutley]

Simon, John and Andrew,

Many thanks to you all for the information, the individual that I am interested died on New Years Eve 1915 at home and I cant work out how. Could it be that he had one too many in a festive mood and fell down the stairs!!! Hopefully the death certificate will tell me. Thanks again for the information.