Which of these death records is the most accurate?
David Lancaster has unearthed conflicting information about a death, and requested expert help about which source to trust
QMy 3x great grandfather, John Lancaster, died on 3 June 1871. His death certificate gives his age as 67 (although the informant was not a family member), but his memorial inscription clearly states that he died “in his 64th year”. Which of these sources is most likely to be correct?
To add further confusion, John’s stated ages on the 1841–1871 census records are 30, 48, 54 and 67 respectively. David Lancaster
AThe death certificate indicates a year of birth of c1804, while the gravestone indicates c1807. Any record is open to human error. The quality of the information on both of these records depends on the accuracy of the person who first presented the information, and also the care with which the third party copied out the information or remembered it (if they were doing it from memory). Sometimes mistakes were amended, and I have seen plenty of corrections on both certificates and gravestones, but there are also many erroneous records that were never changed.
While it may appear difficult to correct a mistake on a gravestone, information could be inserted over the top of existing text, and masons were also skilled at inserting new stone patches into memorials to correct errors, such as ages, if asked to do so.
Ages on death certificates are notoriously prone to errors because deaths were often registered by people who had little knowledge of the deceased – particularly if they died away from their family. Even if the person who registered the death was a family member, many ages were little more than an estimate. In John’s case, you have told me that the informant (Henry Sutcliffe) was not a relative. Relationships were only recorded on certificates from 1875, so it may be worth carrying out further research to double-check if Henry was related, if you have not already done so.
The certificate copy comes from the General Register Office ( www.gro.gov.uk), and the information on it will have been copied out several times before the final entry was produced – making it more susceptible to copying errors than one produced by the local register office that originally recorded the death. However, it does match the age in the burial register, and that information is likely to have come directly from the locally produced death certificate or a family member.
On the gravestone we have entries for six family members who died on various dates between 1839 and 1883. Since the entries are spaced to fit perfectly into the available area on the stone, it is likely that the memorial was engraved after the death of the last person who is mentioned. With such a time lapse, John’s age at death could easily have been remembered incorrectly.
The 1851 and 1871 census returns suggest a year of birth for John of c1803/1804. When the 1841 census was taken, enumerators were asked to round down ages for adults to the nearest five years. John was recorded as 30, which suggests that he was actually aged between 30 and 34, indicating a year of birth between 1807 and 1811. The fact that there is a discrepancy regarding John’s age here as well alternatively suggests that his true age was uncertain, and may even have been a matter of dispute among surviving family members.
On the balance of evidence, particularly given the likely time lapse between the death and the erection of the memorial, the death certificate is more likely to be correct. But John’s age does appear to have been the subject of some uncertainty, so you should allow for this when searching for his baptism. Celia Heritage