I was a transcriber for the free BMD project, but family duties have put a stop to my efforts. I am looking after my 90 years old father. He has senile dementia so I am occupied for most of the time. I promise, though, provided you guys leave some for me to do, that I'll be back at it asap. Now to the point of my posting. I am having trouble tracing two marriages. Stephen BULL m Eve MASON abt. 1850 Ernest COOK m Harriett ROBBINS between 1894 and 1915 There is no mention of the events in the indexes and they have been searched thoroughly by others as well as by me. They may have lived in sin all those years, but have they just not been indexed? In the June 2001 issue of F T M there is an article 'A Comedy of Errors, Act 2' which would appear to explain why. Extensive research by Michael Foster of NZ highlights the problems with the registration system. I quote, "Both the records and their indexes are incomplete and far from accurate." As many as one in 40 c19th marriages are 'missing'. He shows instances where whole pages of events have been omitted from the indexes. I am wondering if the Free BMD project could not go someway to correcting the records. Am I not right in believing that, over time, there should be an index entry for every page/record in the registers? If the index database is checked when each quarter's indexes have been transcribed, cannot all the missing entries be identified? The GRO could then be asked where are, say, Amesbury Births, Vol 5a, entries 243 to 247, etc. Or have I misunderstood the way the registers and the Free BMD indexes work? Cheers Ernie Bull Was of Bristol, now W London