Cumbria BMD

There's a recent addition to the growing list of Register Office websites with indexes of locally registered births, marriages and deaths. Cumbria BMD presently contains data for the Barrow-in-Furness Registration District, 258,958 births, 84,845 marriages and 145,401 deaths. Further districts are promised "in the near future."

People sometimes ask why they should bother going to the local district site when the GRO has compiled an index for all of England and Wales, and much of it is now available at FreeBMD. 

First, there are well documented deficiencies in the GRO index. It's one step further removed from the registration with the consequent scope for errors and omissions. Always go to the local index, where available if you can't find an event you expect.

Second, the information available is slightly different. On the upside, entries are available for more c=recent events than on FreeBMD, and for marriages you get the names of the marriage partners and the church or register office where the ceremony occurred. On the downside, you don't get the quarter, only the year the event occurred, and no age at death is given in the index.

Cumbria BMD is part of the UKBMD group of Family History and Genealogy web sites.