How do you obtain a post-WW1 death certificate...

[Guest Pete Wood]

If I attempt to trace a soldier, who survived the Great War, and only have his full name, how do I go about finding out when and where he died.....??

[Terry Denham]

TPots

Contact the GRO for help and advice.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/registration/...al_register.asp

[Guest Pete Wood]

Tried there, Terry. They told me that I need to know the year of death. Hmmm

If I didn't know the year of death (which I don't) then I was told I have to trawl through quarterly editions of every year (from 1919 onwards!!) at the Family Records centre in London.....

There must be an easier way, surely......

It was also suggested that I use the online resources of www.1837online.com but I can't work out how much that would cost me.

Has anyone any experience with this service?

[Sue Light]

RT

I use '1837online' a great deal, and find it worthwhile, but it does cost. To view each page the cost varies between 7p and 10p, and if a surname is fairly common, or is one where the first three letters are present in a lot of common surnames, then you may have to look at as many as 20-30 images for each year [perhaps more]. There is a bit of a knack with each surname of honing in on what you want, but it works at its best when you are fairly certain of the year of death, give or take a bit. So if you were looking for 'Smith' it would be very hard, but if you were looking for, [just an example], 'Smilthaven,' it would still be jolly difficult as the results are based on the first three letters of each name. It's useful if the charge is going to be reasonable compared to the time, and parking charges, it takes to go to the nearest library/record office that holds the indexes, but I think I would lose the will to live if I had to search online more than a few years for any particular surname.

If you have no idea of year of death, and are searching for someone dying in the middle to later part of the last century, I think that the trawl through the indexes is the only way open to you. If you have some idea of place of residence or death, then perhaps appealing to local knowledge may produce some results, but you would have to strike lucky. Even knowing my grandfather's approximate year of death, and place of residence [although not of death], I have been unable to trace a death certificate over the last five years of looking. Others, potentially far more difficult, just jump out at you.

Regards - Sue

[gem22]

Pete

I had a similar problem when I wanted to get a copy of my paternal Grandfather's death certificate. Here in Cambridge the county records office has a microfiche copy of all the Registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths. If you have the time you can trawl through the registers and make notes on any likely entries. I was lucky in that the name I was looking for was uncommon and it only took about thirty mnutes to locate the correct record.

I was then able to contact Stockport with the register details and I got a copy a few days later.

You may well be able to do something similar locally. I got the info about the microfiches from Stockport simply by phoning and asking for help. The person I spoke to was extremely helpful.

Garth

[Jonathan Saunders]

The 1837 site might cost you a fortune ... I tried to find a war widow who may have died from 1938 onwards and about £40 later was no better off knowing when she died (either I missed her or she died abroad or is not as easily recognisable in the register as I thought - I am sure she did not remarry).

Personally I usually I go the FRC and go thru' the quarterly registers but it can be a drag when you dont find anything after a couple of hours and yr still only half way through - also you need a reasonably uncommon name otherwise you have to search until, say, he was a 100 and see how many likely candidates you have and take it from there. From about 1980 I think they give dob in the index which might help you?

If you know where he was living up to a certain period you can try electoral registers to find out when he disappeared and also look through "deaths" columns of the local newspapers. Possibly the local archive centre you would use for this would have burial records of the municipal cemetery/church graveyard or crematorium.

A real shot in the dark is if he was a member of his old regimental association - they might be able to help, such as his name remembered shortly after death in the qtrly journal. How about army pension records? I have no idea to what extent this might be available to the public but worth a try finding out?

Did his service record survive? I found when two "survivors" died - both in the 1950s - as a result of letters to the MOD from their widows in the WO files at the PRO/NA.

Good luck hunting!