GRO records England and Wales, BMD Registrations, commenced mid 1837 and continue to the present day. It is possible to access Birth and Death registrations online free of charge and, should you wish to, obtain a copy certificate. You can also obtain copies of marriage registrations.

When you go to the main page it states:

The General Register Office is part of His Majesty’s Passport Office and oversees civil registration in England and Wales. We maintain the national archive of all births, marriages and deaths dating back to 1837 and further information on our services can be found using the links shown below.

There are three options on this page and to search the indexes you need to click on “Order Certificates online”

To be able to use the site you have to register. There is an area to either register or to log in. If you registered previously but have not logged in during the past two years your account will have been removed from the system and you should register again using the links above.

Once you have registered and/or logged in you first area of the site you want, in this case “Search the GRO Indexes”, which is one of about 7 selections possible:

Initial selection

Now you get to select which type of registration you wish to search for:
Registration Type Selection

Once you have selected the type you can enter the year. The info button, when you hover over it, says:

Mandatory field. Select year of registration rather than the year of the event if they differ. GRO birth indexes are available for records from 1837 up to 1934 and from 1984 up to the current year. GRO death indexes are available for records from 1837 up to 1957 and 1984 up to the current year. GRO is currently identifying a rolling programme to put more of its indexes online over time. We will notify you via our website when any new indexes are added. You can view GRO’s birth, death and marriage indexes online via other websites, e.g. FreeBMD, where they are available to view free of charge up to 1983.

Select 0, 1 or 2 years either side of the event as you require.

The Data entry area (Deaths)

The input area fro birth is similar with the addition of a field for the mother’s maiden name.

The results, up to 250 items, are returned when you click on search:

Example of results

To create a citation

Select the two lines of an entry using the mouse by which ever method you prefer. (1)Scrape the text using a mouse movement. or (2) Place the cursor at the start of the text and use the arrow keys to highlight the text.

Open the Irish Location Database program and choose Other Tools > Text Formatter & Quick Citations. Or Ctrl+Shift+T.

Paste your selected lines into the HM Passport Office GRO section which you will find under the Other Citations tab.

GRO Input section

You don’t have to select whether it is a birth or death. The program can work that out unless it is one of the later style results that contains the phrase ” DOR “. If that is the case the program will request clarification.

If you wish to have a narrative as well as the citation make sure that ‘Create narrative’ is ticked. When this is the case the ‘Use ‘ is automatically set and greyed out so it cannot be changed. You also select whether you wish to apply the currently selected style of the text formatter. Read about styles here for more detail.

If you do not wish to have a narrative as the citation is for existing text perhaps, untick ‘Create narrative’ and the ‘Apply style’ box will be automatically unticked and disabled. The ‘Use ‘ tick box will be enabled so you can decide to have tag if this is to be an inline citation.

Create narrative ON, Apply style ON

===1863 Death Registration===
:The death of Thomas Cragg, aged 81, was recorded in the Chorlton registration district in the first (Jan-Mar) quarter of 1863.<ref>'''Death''': CRAGG, THOMAS in 1863 Citing HM Passport Office, General Register Office, United Kingdom; [https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/2/ Licenced under Open Government Licence 2]; © 2023 Crown Copyright; The death of CRAGG, THOMAS, Age (in years): 81; Registration Year: 1863 , Registration Quarter: Jan-Mar; Registration District: CHORLTON Volume 08C Page 456, (Web). Accessed 21 May 2023.</ref>

Create narrative ON, Apply style OFF

The death of Thomas Cragg, aged 81, was recorded in the Chorlton registration district in the first (Jan-Mar) quarter of 1863.<ref>'''Death''': CRAGG, THOMAS in 1863 Citing HM Passport Office, General Register Office, United Kingdom; [https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/2/ Licenced under Open Government Licence 2]; © 2023 Crown Copyright; The death of CRAGG, THOMAS, Age (in years): 81; Registration Year: 1863 , Registration Quarter: Jan-Mar; Registration District: CHORLTON Volume 08C Page 456, (Web). Accessed 21 May 2023.</ref>

Create narrative OFF, Apply <ref> tags ON

<ref>'''Death''': CRAGG, THOMAS in 1863 Citing HM Passport Office, General Register Office, United Kingdom; [https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/2/ Licenced under Open Government Licence 2]; © 2023 Crown Copyright; The death of CRAGG, THOMAS, Age (in years): 81; Registration Year: 1863 , Registration Quarter: Jan-Mar; Registration District: CHORLTON Volume 08C Page 456, (Web). Accessed 21 May 2023.</ref>

Create narrative OFF, Apply <ref> tags OFF

'''Death''': CRAGG, THOMAS in 1863 Citing HM Passport Office, General Register Office, United Kingdom; [https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/2/ Licenced under Open Government Licence 2]; © 2023 Crown Copyright; The death of CRAGG, THOMAS, Age (in years): 81; Registration Year: 1863 , Registration Quarter: Jan-Mar; Registration District: CHORLTON Volume 08C Page 456, (Web). Accessed 21 May 2023.