Just in case any one has missed this annoucement. Births & Deaths - Extra Indexes and Temporary Price Cuts Major changes are about to affect our access to records of births and deaths in England & Wales. Indexes Until recently, the only way to consult indexes of birth and death registrations online and free of charge was by visiting the FreeBMD website. FreeBMD will continue to be useful to many researchers. However, for some searches, newly released indexes on the General Register Office (GRO) site will also be helpful. They cover these periods: · Births (July 1837-December 1915) · Deaths (July 1837-December 1957) Unlike all other indexes, the new GRO ones include these details for all years back to 1837: · Births = the mother's maiden name · Deaths = the age at death. The new GRO indexes are very cumbersome to use as you have to specify the year (plus or minus up to only 2 years) and also the gender of the person concerned. Temporary price cuts The GRO is now legally able to issue registration information other than as a certificate. As a pilot service, it intends to make information available in PDF form. Phase 1 of the new service starts on 9 November 2016 and will run for up to 3 weeks. It will test demand for uncertificated copies of the civil registration entries that are already digitised (i.e. birth entries recorded 1837 – 1934 and death entries recorded 1837 – 1957), in addition to those much more recent birth, death, marriage and civil partnership records which were also recorded directly onto the registration service online system. The application must be submitted online and contain a GRO reference. These PDFs will cost £6. This phase of the pilot will close after 3 weeks or when 45,000 PDFs have been ordered, whichever comes soonest. Further phases will follow and are described in detail on the GRO site. So, if you want details of such births and deaths, you can get them for £6.00, instead of £9.25 - but only for a very short time. Tim Treeby DFHS 13926 --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus