Thanks Jim. I have taken your advice and this is what she says If there is a time against the date of birth then there was more than one child born alive at the birth. If however a mother had twins, one liveborn and one stillborn, then the live born twin will not have a time against the birth. Until 1926 there were no registrations at all of a still born child. Having said that, again the early registrations are not consistent. The registrar in the Eton district did not put the times of births of twins in the registers at all until 1845 while the one in Stoke-on-Trent put times against all the registrations up until about 1850. It is possible to check for twins by looking for identical or consecutive GRO references in the indexes. I have checked the GRO Indexes and no matches so it looks,to me, like the Wigan Registrar did the same as the Stoke on Trent one. Thanks again Pamela -