CIVIL REGISTRATION in ENGLAND & WALES
Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths commenced 1 July 1837 with the introduction of the first central register for England and Wales, held by the General Registrar at the General Register Office (GRO) in London. The country was divided into 27 regions, which in turn were divided into districts, under the control of Superintendent Registrars, and divided further into sub-districts, under the control of Registrars.
The Superintendent Registrar had a duty to ensure that all marriages were recorded, wherever they took place. He was authorised to conduct civil marriage ceremonies at the register office and he was required to be present at all but Anglican, Quaker or Jewish ceremonies, although since 1898 other denominations have been able to apply for the same privileged status. Marriages that took place in church were recorded by the clergy in the marriage registers as usual and also in duplicate books for registration purposes. When the duplicate books were full they were passed to the local registrar, but the registrar also visited all the local churches each quarter and recorded all the marriages up to date. A copy of each marriage was then passed to the General Register Office to be incorporated into the national index.
Therefore, for marriages performed in the Register Office there should be two records, one in the local index and one in the national index, and for all other marriages there will be three records, one in the church or non-conformist register, one in the local index and one in the national index.
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Copyright Note:
The data in the GRO National Indexes are the Copyright of the Crown and the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reserves all rights of the Crown in the use of these data.
LOCAL REGISTER OFFICE MARRIAGE INDEXES
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