A quick background synopsis. A cousin of GF’s was victim of a hit and run several months ago. She had already been living a pretty complicated and chaotic life over the last 50 odd years, including no small amount of mental illness and tended to drop off the radar quite frequently – sometimes because she was behind bars. My GF’s family was traced and contacted after the accident because it really looked likely she would die and the couldn’t trace any closer relatives.

She didn’t die and is now getting closer to being able to leave hospital (and they can’t wait to get rid of her – she’s high maintenance) but she’ll never make a full recovery (won’t really be able to walk again plus she suffered head injuries) and she’d not be able to cope moving back to the home she had before the accident.

We’re trying to help her arrange housing but a stumbling block is she doesn’t have (and has probably never had) her birth certificate which the housing folk require as part of the application process.

She lives in London but was born in Scotland – she can’t physically travel to Scotland if required to to get a duplicate certificate – the other difficult aspects are:

She’s never known who her father is
She can name but has been disowned by her mother
She knows the town she was born in (or rather the town her mother lived in when she was born).

and other than her date of birth… no other details – like the actual hospital.

So.. she’s in London, we’re in Scotland. What can we do to help?

Sounds like you have all the details you need to order a copy….

http://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/registration/how-to-order-an-official-extract-from-the-registers

Wow – that looks far less onerous than I imagined. I thought more ID or family history would be required but it looks like thats only an issue if you have a fairly common surname which luckily isn’t the case.

Is she famous?

If so, contact the BBC and they’ll arrange for a team of family history researchers to do all the hard work for her and send her on a free holiday to America or Australia or somewhere to have nice chats with local historians.

We can readily assume there’ll be relatives in Australia. My GF’s family name is very rare – probably only a few hundred people with the same surname. Its because one her ancestors changed their name to distance their branch of the family from all the ne’er do wells that were a bit murdery and getting deported to the colonies.

I presume the birth certificate will have her dads name on it which will be more family history than she’s ever had. The only family life shes had ‘s her mother telling her repeatedly that she’s always been unwanted. I don’t really know what can of worms it’ll open.

I presume the birth certificate will have her dads name on it

Not necessarily.

I’ve been down the whole family history rabbit hole and you’d be amazed at some of the stuff that turns up. In my case, an aunt, two uncles and a murdered grandmother that nobody knew anything about.

Don’t think fathers name has to be on the cert.

Don’t think fathers name has to be on the cert

no. definitely doesn’t.

Fathers name doesn’t have to be on certificate

as above.
I – after a cousin of my dads did initial research – followed up on behalf of my mum’s side. some ancestors fell out of windows, some went under trains, most lived in poverty for a long time, mum’s name trail died out when a grandmother or similar had offspring, no father listed.

Also realised my origins are further scattered than I realised, 1/4 from darkest Lancs, also Perthshire as well as Renfrewshire and Dumbarton area.

To have one ancestor fall out of a window may regarded as a misfortune…

darn, too late for the ghost edit..

I do regret not asking more about my wider family from my parents, pretty much too late now 🙁

http://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/nhs-central-register/enquiries

If MrsT wasn’t in Spain I could maybe get het to advise. Will look back next weekend when she is home.

Update….

Full name of individual(s) concerned, date and place of the event. If a common surname, further details such as parents’ names are required.

Now you’d think that would be easy…… no. She doesn’t really know how he surname is spelt. She spells it phonetically her medical records have two different spellings of more traditional forms but we don’t really know if thats her family surname anyway – it may have been her mothers maiden name, the fathers name or the mothers name from another marriage or relationship

So she doesn’t know her mothers maiden name and theres debate as to whether her mum’s first name was ‘Ellen’ or ‘Helen’.

She doesn’t know where she was born.

Hurray! The hospital are desperate to get her out, won’t diagnose her as mentally ill even though even in a hospital environment she’s hoarding – thats only a personality disorder apparently . The housing won’t let her in without a birth certificate.

Sounds like what she needs is a public law solicitor – maybe shelter or CAB could help? Birth ceritificate must be a policy issue rather than legislation, and the blanket application of any policy without common-sense exceptions for certain situations is IIRC illegal.

Have gone into 2 Princes St, Scotland’s People office? MrsT reckons they/should with a bit of effort find what you need by tracing your girlfriends family history. Although as ever jobsworths my put obstacles in the way.

When my wife was searching for her birth mother a few years ago we booked a slot at the search rooms http://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/visit-us/scotlandspeople-centre
It gave us records of her mothers birth, my wife’s birth, plus her mothers marriage certificate, and she found she had 3 half sisters.. The staff were very helpful and gave tips on the best way to conduct the searches..

Surely you could press for a proper mental health assessment? Thats the route I’d be going down right now.

As said, tracing your girlfriends history would probably be more productive as you could track down the aunts name and from that get a birth name.

Best of luck to you, sounds like a properly shit situation for everyone.

I think our first step going to be Ninfan’s suggestion of batting it back to the housing folk and seeing what exception they can make – she’s had a tenancy with them before so you’d think there must be some options.

I think we’d have to go to NRS ourselves – its all too vague to try and do via by post / online. Its now emerged that as well as 3 spellings of the surname she actually uses she’s had and used another surname as well at times and we can’t untangle which she might have had a birth and whether either of two names might refer to a mother or father or a later married name of the mother.

So we have a date of birth we’re fairly certain of
A birth surname we’re uncertain of
And a mother with two possible forenames and four possible surnames that we’re so far aware of.

What I’d have to find out before going over there though is whether I could go in there and do the research and walk away with someone else’s ID on their behalf.

The searching is really easy, saying that my MIL has an unusual middle name, and there was only 2 people with the same name registered in the whole of Scotland, and the other one was her Aunt.. Having the date of birth is a massive advantage, and you can compare the birth certificate against the parents names, and marriage certificates from the parents if you have some rough estimate of when they were married, but the records people should be able to point you in the right direction of what things to put in your searches…

Can one of the GFs parents a company you? Or at least be able to verify mothers ID. Do you know of any burial sites where family are buried? birth/death dates may be useful. As much family info as possible should help achieve a good outcome.