Q&A

Were my grandparents married illegally?

Q I have been unable to find a birth certificate for my maternal grandmother Rose Coombes, née Dean. Would it have been legal for her to marry my grandfather without one in 1939?

Through DNA testing, we have established that Rose’s mother was Daisy Lilly Everett (1887-1964). We believe that Rose may have been given away at birth, or shortly after, and can find no record of her father. She was born around 1904 in Somerset. We can find no records for her until 1939 when she was known as Rose Dean and living in Wiltshire. She claimed she took the surname from the people she worked for as a servant. Steven Smith

A It isn’t a strict requirement to produce a birth certificate nowadays when marrying, so it is very unlikely that it was needed then. You are currently required to show evidence of your name and date of birth, but that can be done in other ways, the most common being a passport. The rules change regularly and you could check the records of the Registrar General (held at The National Archives in Kew in the series RG) to learn the guidance to registrars (or clergy) in 1939, but I’m not sure it would help in finding a birth registration.

I would concentrate on finding your grandmother in the 1921 census

In England and Wales, no specific surname for the child was shown on entries in the birth register until 1969, so the indexes show the surnames of the father and mother, either or both, depending on their claimed marital status. If Rose’s mother was Daisy Everett, and no father was named, then the index would show her under Everett, but if her mother was using another surname, perhaps that