The resolution on the Amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery was adopted on Jan. 31, 1865.
January 31 Laus Deo! By John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) The resolution on the Amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery was adopted on Jan. 31, 1865.
These lines were composed by Whittier on hearing the bells ring on that occasion and as he said himself, "it wrote itself, or rather sang itself, while the bells rang."
IT is done! Clang of bell and roar of gun Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel! How the great guns, peal on peal,
5 Fling the joy from town to town! Ring, O bells!
Every stroke exulting tells Of the burial hour of crime. Loud and long, that all may hear,
10 Ring for every listening ear Of Eternity and Time!
Let us kneel: God's own voice is in that peal, And this spot is holy ground.
15 Lord, forgive us! What are we, That our eyes this glory see, That our ears have heard the sound!
For the Lord On the whirlwind is abroad; 20 In the earthquake he has spoken; He has smitten with his thunder The iron walls asunder, And the gates of brass are broken! Loud and long
25 Lift the old exulting song; Sing with Miriam by the sea
He has cast the mighty down; Horse and rider sink and drown; "He hath triumphed gloriously!"
30 Did we dare, In our agony of prayer, Ask for more than He has done?
When was ever his right hand Over any time or land 35 Stretched as now beneath the sun?
How they pale, Ancient myth and song and tale, In this wonder of our days, When the cruel rod of war
40 Blossoms white with righteous law, And the wrath of man is praise!
Blotted out! All within and all about Shall a fresher life begin; 45 Freer breathe the universe
As it rolls its heavy curse On the dead and buried sin! It is done! In the circuit of the sun
50 Shall the sound thereof go forth. It shall bid the sad rejoice,
It shall give the dumb a voice, It shall belt with joy the earth!
Ring and swing, 55 Bells of joy! On morning's wing Send the song of praise abroad!
With a sound of broken chains Tell the nations that He reigns, Who alone is Lord and God! 60
James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
Reasons for creating the GRO General Registry Office
Prior to the creation of the General Register Office (GRO) in 1837, there was no national system of civil registration in England and Wales. Baptisms, marriages, and burials were recorded in parish registers maintained by Church of England (Anglican) clergy. However, with the great increase in nonconformity and the gradual relaxation of the laws againstCatholics and other dissenters from the late 17th century, more and more baptisms, marriages and burials were going unrecorded in the registers of the Anglican Church.
The increasingly poor state of English parish registration led to numerous attempts to shore up the system in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Marriage Act of 1753 attempted to prevent 'clandestine' marriages by imposing a standard form of entry for marriages, which had to be signed by both parties to the marriage and witnesses. Additionally, except in the case of Jews and Quakers, legal marriages had to be carried out according to the rites of the Church of England. Sir George Rose's Parochial Registers Act of 1812 laid down that all events had to be entered on standard entries in bound volumes. It also declared that the church registers of Nonconformists were not admissible in court as evidence of births, marriages and deaths. Only those maintained by the clergy of the Church of England could be presented in court as legal documents. This caused considerable hardship for Nonconformists. A number of proposals were presented to Parliament to set up centralised registries for recording vital events in the 1820s but none came to fruition.[2]
Eventually, increasing concern that the poor registration of baptisms, marriages and burials undermined property rights, by making it difficult to establish lines of descent, coupled with the complaints of Nonconformists, led to the establishment in 1833 of a parliamentary Select Committee on Parochial Registration. This took evidence on the state of the parochial system of registration, and made proposals that were eventually incorporated into the 1836 Registration and Marriage Acts. In addition, the government wanted to survey things like infant mortality, fertility and literacy to bring about improvements in health and social welfare. The medical establishment advocated this because a rapidly growing population in the northern industrial towns - caused by the Industrial Revolution - had created severe overcrowding, and the links between poor living conditions and short life expectancy were now known.
The answer was the establishment of a civil registration system. It was hoped that improved registration of vital events would protect property rights through the more accurate recording of lines of descent. Civil registration was also to remove the need for Nonconformists to rely upon the Church of England for registration, and provide medical data for research.[3] As a result, in 1836, legislation was passed that ordered the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales. This took effect from 1 July 1837. A General Register Office was set up in London and the office of Registrar General was established.
England and Wales were divided into 619 registration districts (623 from 1851), each under the supervision of a Superintendent Registrar. The districts were based on the recently introduced poor law unions. The registration districts were further divided into sub-districts (there could be two or more), each under the charge of Registrars who were appointed locally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Register_Office_for_England_and_Wales
In 1972 the GRO became part of the newly created Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS), with the Registrar General in overall charge. Until then it had had several statistical functions, including the conduct of population censuses and the production of annual population estimates. All these were moved elsewhere within the new organisation. The GRO then became just one division within OPCS, headed by a Deputy Registrar General. Then in 1996 the OPCS, and therefore the GRO, became part of the newly createdOffice for National Statistics, and the office of Registrar General was merged with that of Head of the Government Statistical Service.
Look at the dates very closely
On 1 April 2008, the General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO) became a subsidiary of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), then an executive agency of the Home Office. The decision to make the transfer of GRO to IPS was finalised following the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2007. As such IPS and the Home Officebecame the natural home for GRO. The move followed changes to make Office for National Statistics (ONS) more independent of the British Government, which meant the ONS was no longer responsible for the registration role it held.
In 2013 IPS was renamed HM Passport Office and as of 2013 the GRO is now part of that organisation. HM Passport Office remains an agency of the Home Office.
https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/content/help/index.aspx?670
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The Registrar General for Scotland
If you think that the man in charge of the National Records of Scotland, where births, deaths and marriages are recorded, has a fairly predictable job, you would be very much mistaken.
Some careers bring with them inherent variety but others, perhaps, could be considered to have a more predictable quality and might even, if you were being uncharitable, be described as boring. At first glance this might seem to be the case for Duncan Macniven, Registrar General for Scotland. After all, the department he manages the National Records of Scotland (NRS) maintains a national database of births, deaths and marriages, and produces a census every 10 years.
And that, you might think, is that.
However, on top of this is the massive increase in interest in genealogy, and the understandable desire of people to find out where and who they came from and because historically Scotland has often been an exporter of people to all parts of the globe, there's barely a part of the world that doesn't contain someone with a Caledonian heritage. The Registrar General and his department, in consequence, are leading the world in making its records accessible via the Internet but thats only part of his ambitions.
As for the census - this involves every person or household in Scotland, in a fairly time-consuming process, completing a questionnaire that covers all aspects of their lives. Just gathering this volume of data is a logistical nightmare but then the Registrar General and his team have to interpret at least some of it, in order that national and local government can adequately plan the sorts of services that the population has come to expect, or might need in the future.
"We did a census in 1991 and try to do one every 10 years but thats too occasional because, of course, you only get detailed information once every decade", Duncan Macniven says. "So the information you hold is becoming increasingly out-of-date as you move nearer and nearer towards your next census. We are therefore looking to see whether its possible to use other survey data thats already collected and available, to lower the peak demand on both this organisation and the people of Scotland that the census brings.
In essence, we're looking to see ways in which we can get better statistics that are produced at greater frequency, but keep them very accurate, as happens with the census".
He explains that one way of achieving this would be to reduce or eliminate much of the duplication that exists between organisations that have little, if any, formal overlap.
"There has developed a string of quite major surveys, such as the Scottish Household Survey and the Scottish Workforce Survey", he says. "People answer questions and the results are both detailed and rich in data. Sample size, however, is inevitably much smaller than the census, which covers everyone in the country. The difficulty of that is that it doesn't give you the richness of small-area statistics that the census does. They tend to be subject surveys rather than linking up different factors.
For example, the household survey might describe the size and accommodation offered by a property, while the workforce survey looks at employment. But if you were to add them together and administer them as one core survey with several strands, you could get to something approaching the quality of the census. And let's face it, filling out a census form would not be everyone's definition of a good time".
As an illustration, Duncan Macniven points out that one of the census questions relates to car ownership, information that is already held by DVLA in Swansea. "There's clearly a privacy issue that needs to be properly debated but maybe it's in the public interest to link these sorts of databases", he adds.
Changes regarding collecting census data are unlikely to happen before 2011, however changes in registrations will happen sooner.
From '06 you will be able to register events anywhere in Scotland - new enabling legislation is going through the Scottish Executive at the moment. Another advantage is that if you live in one part of Scotland and the birth takes place in another, the child can be registered at whichever one is most convenient for you. What we're really talking about is having a national system being locally delivered.
These sorts of legislative changes have been part of the meat, bread and butter of all previous registrar generals but what separates Duncan Macniven most strongly from his predecessors, perhaps, is the modern interest some might say obsession with tracing their family or personal history." hmmm
watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMjPbbM5fPU#t=1725
Births...
In the early days of the system, it was up to each local registrar to find out what births, marriages and deaths had taken place in his sub-district. It has therefore been estimated that only about 50-60% of births, both legitimate and illegitimate, were registered as parents were not legally obliged to inform the registrar. It has been estimated that in some parts of England up to 15% of births were not registered between 1837 and 1875.[5] As a result of the Births and Deaths Act 1874, registration was made compulsory from 1875 and the onus was now on parents to inform the registrar when they had a child and penalties were imposed on those who failed to register. Births had to be registered within 42 days at the district or sub-district office, usually by the mother or father. If more days had elapsed but it was less than three months since the birth, the superintendent registrar had to be present and if between three months and a year, the registration could only be authorised by the Registrar General.
Until 1926, there were no registrations at all of still born children. For illegitimate children, the original 1836 legislation provided that "it shall not be necessary to register the name of any father of a bastard child." From 1850, instructions to registrars were clarified to state that, "No putative father is allowed to sign an entry in the character of 'Father'." However, the law was changed again 1875 to allow a father of an illegitimate child to record his name on his child's birth certificate if he attended the register office with the mother. In 1953 a child father could also be recorded on the birth certificate, if not married to the mother, without being physically present to sign the register.
Marriages...
For marriages, Church of England clergy acted as the local registrar. Two identical registers of marriages were kept and when they were complete, one was sent to the superintendent registrar. However, every three months, the clergyman had to send a copy of his marriage records (detailing marriages that had taken place in the preceding three months) directly to the superintendent registrar. The Marriage Act 1836 also permitted marriages by licence to take place in approved churches, chapels and nonconformist meeting houses, other than those of the Church of England. Marriages were only legally binding if they were notified to the superintendent registrar by the officiating minister so in effect, this required the presence of a local registration officer as the authorising person. When a nonconformist minister or other religious official, such as a rabbi, performed the ceremony it was necessary for the local registrar or his assistant to be present so that the marriage was legal. This legalisation was not repealed until 1898, after which date, nonconformist ministers and other religious leaders could take on the role of notifying official, if so appointed, and on the condition that their premises were licensed for the solemnising of marriage. The civil authorities, i.e. the local registrar, could also perform marriage by certificate in a register office. Changes in marriage laws since 1836 have also affected how marriages are registered, for example, civil partnerships for same-sex couples were introduced by the British Government in 2004 and the GRO records these ceremonies through its civil registration
system.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Register_Office_for_England_and_Wales