Birth Re-registration

I recently ordered a birth certificate from the GRO and have recieved a
letter from them stating that the birth has been re-registered.

In the letter they stated that the re-registered entry could be supplied if
I could provide them with the full details including the parent's names.
Unfortunately, I don't know the parents names. They suggested that I write to the
Public Relations Unit of the GRO explaining the situation to them. I then
asked if they could send me the original certificate, they stated that I would
still have to write to the Public Relations Unit.

Is this normal procedure? Does anyone else have any experience in this area?

Liz...

Is this,by chance, a fairly recent cert .... of someone who may be alive?

I had the same thing but I was actually in the FRC at the time and
invited into an office to discuss the matter.

The issue involved the birth cert of a first cousin of my husband. I
explained the (lack of) relationship from my point of view and said I
would like both certificates if poss. They agreed. It was very odd
really that they were asking. This was about five years ago.

As I had guessed the issue was that the person had been given her
mother's surname when she was born and was later re-registered after her
mother married the man who was, presumably her father.

What seemed odd to me, and still does,is that if the issue was her
privacy (and why should it be when BDM certs are available to all?) then
nothing was achieved by speaking to me, that I could see ... If I had
been a muckraker of some kind then what I said, which was the truth,
would be exactly the kind of innocuous thing to say anyway .....

But re-registration is almost certain to be for that reason,

roy...

I find this even odder than you do, Liz. Personally I've never come
across it, but is there some new policy now at the GRO to protect
people who were initially born illegitimate and whose parents then
marry later? Can I apply, please, because it applies to me, too! I
was born in 1940 and my parents didn't marry until 1942, but I wasn't
re-registered. Nor, I imagine, would my parents even have
thought of it and nor would I. Presumably, this is some new law
thought up by some barmpot, politically correct civil servant to make
those born illegitimate feel better?

It seems to me to make no sense whatsoever. Surely the only thing
that matters, historically and factually, is what status someone has
at the time their birth is registered - full stop. If they are born
illegitimate and their parents later marry and make them legitimate,
it does not alter their status at the moment of birth. To re-register
their birth as legitimate in the light of a later event, i.e. a
marriage, if this is in fact what is happening, is surely a
perversion of history.

Perhaps you or someone can point us to the appropriate law?

Further, as you rightly say, they could not have refused you the
certificate anyway, since they are all available to everyone.

Roy Stockdill

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about."

Oscar Wilde

late-marrying parents ....

Liz (Greenwich UK)

nemo...

I had this happen once, for a birth in 1946. The certificate, when it
arrived, was marked "Re-registered under the Registration Act 1926 ...
xxth March 1950". The mother was single at the time, but married in the
March auarter of 1949.
I didn't bother to try and acquire the re-registered certificate, but
there was no difficulty in obtaining the first one. This was in November

Jeff...

Does legitimacy (howver 'acquired') sometimes have
significance in inheritance?

I'm genuinely asking - not asserting this is the case.

2003.

John (Bournemouth).