Birth, marriage & death records

We’d love to think that all our ancestors lived happily ever after. But we all know that real life is rarely like that — and our new Civil Divorce Records, 1858-1911, tell you exactly what happened when it went wrong.

These potentially provocative records can give you a history of the marriage (including addresses), and all the claims and counterclaims that led up to the split. You could find out where and when your great-grandfather started an affair, and with whom!

Were your relatives involved in the most famous maritime disaster in history? This collection reveals more than 1,500 souls that lost their lives when the Titanic sank.

There are two separate registers for passengers and crew. Find an ancestor here, and you’ll discover their full name, age, occupation and last address.

Discover your family’s hidden marriages, long before the start of civil registration. Engaged couples often avoided the traditional calling of banns by getting a marriage licence. This meant they needed a written allegation confirming their marriage was legal — and until 1823 they also had to sign a bond.

London and Surrey, Marriage Bonds and Allegations, 1597-1921, reveals the planning of more than 750,000 weddings from Farnham to Oxted. It gives you the bride and groom’s names, ages and home parishes, plus the parish where the marriage was arranged.

These are by far the most important birth, marriage and death records, and make it much easier to pinpoint your relatives after 1837. They include every vital event registered all over England and Wales, right up to 2005.

The indexes themselves provide a full name, registration district and the year and quarter when the event was registered. However, they also give you everything you need to order the full certificates, which reveal exact dates and places plus parents’ names.

Birth, marriage and death records are the basic building blocks of anybody’s family tree. Construct your Irish lines quickly and easily with our Irish Birth, Marriage, and Death Indexes, 1825-1978.

These 22 million records cover the period of the destroyed Irish censuses, so they can help you fill in frustrating gaps in your discoveries. Indexes from Northern Ireland are included up to 1922.