by Jim » Fri Sep 18, 2009 10:43 pm
I've got two "birth certificates". I've got a CERTIFICATE OF BIRTH bearing the wet signature of the Registrar of Births and Deaths in the Registration District where I was born and containing hand-written details of my given name, gender, date of birth and place of birth (also written by the registrar judging from the hand writing and the pen used). I've also got a CERTIFIED COPY OF AN ENTRY in the register (prepared some 18 years later, either when I was applying for a passport or a provisional driving licence I think) bearing the wet signature of an entirely different registrar (Not unsurprising given the elapsed time between the creation of the original CERTIFICATE OF BIRTH and the CERTIFIED COPY). What this says to me is that my dad rocked up to the registry 6 days after I was born, told the registrar the name and gender of his bouncing new bundle of joy (me), they gave him a CERTIFICATE OF BIRTH and then 18 years later I wrote to the registrar requesting a COPY of my birth certificate which they duly supplied kind of like a certified photocopy of the original page from the registrar (thats what it looks like to me) but signed at the bottom to make it all official like. I think if you want the ACTUAL ENTRY from the registar you'd somehow have to convince the registrar to tear the page out of his or her register and send you the actual page which I think you would have a hard time convincing them to do and would be a bit pointless anyway I feel when you can just request a certified (photo)copy. I hope all this makes sense. It makes sense to me but then I wrote it :)
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