Births and Deaths Registration Act 1836

The General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO) is the section of the United Kingdom HM Passport Office responsible for the civil registration of births (including stillbirths), adoptions, marriages, civil partnerships and deaths in England and Wales and for those same events outside the UK if they involve a UK citizen and qualify to be registered in various miscellaneous registers. With a small number of historic exceptions involving military personnel it does not deal with records of such events occurring within the land or territorial waters of Scotland, Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland; those entities' registration systems have always been separate from England and Wales.

The GRO was founded in 1836 by the , and civil registration commenced in 1837. Its head is the Registrar General. Probably the most distinguished person associated with the GRO in the 19th century, although he was never its head, was William Farr. The current holder of the post (as of March 2014^[update]) is Paul Pugh.

The GRO supplies copies of birth, marriage, civil partnership certificates and death certificates, either online or from one of the local register offices that act on behalf of the GRO.

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 against Catholics 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.

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