Hi Mike, On 3 Jul 2008, at 08:04, eng-manchester-request@rootsweb.com wrote: > I hate to bring bad news but it's entirely possible that this birth > was > never registered. Many births at this early date (less than 3 years > after > the start of civil registration) missed being registered. It was not > mandatory and I'm sure a few slipped through because their parents > didn't > even know they were supposed to do it. I think this is true from my experience, and it is a very reasonable guess. Further I think one can easily imagine there may have been controversy about it, with many people objecting to it on grounds perhaps reminiscent of current arguments about giving data to the government. Besides which I expect it would have doubled the expense - parents will still have seen christening as important and on top of that they now had to pay for civil registration. Wasn't it mandatory at first? Sally in Yorkshire