Re "The only exception is legal adoption when the original entry is is removed from the index and becomes "secret", unless requested by the adoptee following a legal process." ​ There was a chain on the WDYTYA Forum on this topic and a former registrar stated: "birth certificates of adopted children are available like any other, but they will be noted as adopted by the superintendent registrar, and no connection to the adoptive name is shown." In other words, if you are adopted, your original *birth* certificate is still available. If someone wants to buy it, they can, and there will be an annotation of "adopted" on it *but* there will be no further clue about current name, adoptive parents, etc. Acknowledgements to Antony M and if it's wrong, it's my fault. I guess there are a couple of caveats 1. This will surely only apply after adoption became legally recognised in the 1920s - before that it was entirely informal and no certificate would be annotated or amended to cover an informal thing; 2. If I were designing the system from scratch today, I *personally* would seal off the original birth certificates and remove the entries from the indexes. Too easy to glue things together, especially with a computer, to at least home in on candidates. However, removal from the indexes was a non-starter before the computer age. Adrian