Civil birth registrations for Jamaica (1880-1930)

Parishes were established as administrative districts at the English conquest of 1655. Though the boundaries have changed over the succeeding centuries, parishes remain the fundamental administrative unit. The present parishes were consolidated in 1866 with the re-division of eight now-extinct entities listed below. A good historical look at the parishes as they changed over time may be found on the “Jamaican Parish Reference,” http://prestwidge.com/river/jamaicanparishes.html (cited 2010 Jul 1). The three counties of Cornwall, Middlesex, and Surrey have no administrative relevance.

Registration districts are the civil units recording births, marriages, and deaths. Civil registrations of vital records was mandated in 1878, but recording might not have actually begun in any one district until several years later. Each civil registration involves a two-part code. The first part is a two-character alphabetic code where the first represents the parish and the second represents the district, followed by the second part, a sequentially assigned registration number. The district code is typically stamped onto records by hand and may be smudged, cancelled and restamped, or improperly inked. Though indices typically include only the number, for official-record requests both the district code and number are required. An indexer-compiled list of Jamaican registration district names, organized by parish, is accessible at http://scholarship.utm.edu/522/.

Individual birth records differ widely in the completion and form of information recorded. Spelling irregularities are common. Staff in the Registrar General's Office occasionally returned to a birth record to amend data. At least one example has been seen where a name was added to the original registration slip over half a century after the birth was recorded. Typically these emendations are dated clearly.