For those who do not know it yet, Ancestry have put up a 'Beta' of the England and Wales BMD Index images for free from the following web page: http://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/rectype/vital/freebmd/bmd.aspx In some cases the transcription of the first or last name on a page has been wrong (this is now supposed to have been corrected), resulting in the incorrect index page being displayed. Use the 'Prev' or 'Next arrows, or change the 'Image Number' to find the correct page. This facility has been available for about a month and is described in the latest (March 2005) edition of the UK 'Your Family Tree' magazine, so I guess it is official now, though whether it will remain free remains to be seen. It will certainly be a blow to the incomes of '1837 Online' and the other web sites that charge for such access . . . A case of a large US company trying to wipe out the local opposition? An advantage over the images from 1837 Online is that on the Ancestry site the index images are in .JPG format and so after saving to a hard disk can be easily rotated (if skew) and cropped (removing messy borders) using a graphics program. Cheers, John John Addis-Smith Thurleigh, Bedfordshire, England