Adoption / No Birth Record

Despite ordering and checking certificates for all likely births for my
grandfather over a ten year span, I have been unable to find a record for
him. I'm now wondering if he was adopted, in which case my question is are
there any adoption records for the period 1860 to 1970?

Also, would it have been possible/likely that the birth was not registered
at all? If so, what complications would that cause for the unregistered
person?

Thanks - Debbie :)

caroline.bradford...

On the assumption that you meant to type "1860 to 1870", the answer is none.
Adoption only became a legal process in 1927. Before that, it was an
informal affair either between the birth parent(s) and the adoptive ones or
between some external body (orphanage, church etc.) and the adopters.

It is possible that the birth was not registered. At the time in question,
it was the responsibility of the registrar to ensure that all births were
registered, not that of the parents and there was no penalty for parents who
evaded the system. Estimates of how many births slipped through the net
vary, but it was probably between 1 and 10 percent, depending very much on
whereabouts the birth took place (small village where everyone knew everyone
else or inner-city tenement where people came and went all the time). Some
births were registered but the registration got "lost" in the process of
copying and transmitting the details from registrar to superintendent
registrar to GRO to GRO index.

Have you considered the possibility that your grandfather was born out of
wedlock? If his parents were not married (even if they married later), he
is likely to have been registered under his mother's (maiden) name. Another
possibility is that he was the child of an earlier marriage - it was very
common when widows married for her children to take on the surname of her
new husband.

Hope this helps