Yes, I appreciate that. I generally use FreeBMD to find the entry - using the more flexible search parameters, especially the wider date range - then go to GRO to see the maiden name (for births pre 1911) or age (for deaths pre 1866).
Findmypast is a better option as they have maiden names for a good proportion of the pre-1911 entries - you don't need a subscription.
We seem to have four children with no record in the BMD/GRO index, but all have a christening entry in Familysearch.
I've checked, and found no burial for an Almond during the few months before Alice's baptism date.
I guess the acid test would be to buy the birth certificate for Elizabeth, confirm that she was Alice's twin, and also establish her date of birth. But first I'll check Ancestry in case there's an Almond tree (pun intended).
The gap between births would be shortened if the mother wasn't breast-feeding the children herself.
I had the same thought and found a public tree (owner sue almond) with Alice(twin) Almond in it, parents James Almond and Emma Coppen. Her date of birth is given as 8 Aug 1872, so does not match Kate Evelyn Luard's birthdate. But the DoB could be wrong as there are lots of duplications in this tree.
Yes, I found the same tree. Even if the birthdate shown is the one on the certificate, it's possible that the birth was registered late, and the date falsified.
Agreed Clara seemed to have children yearly, but in 1881 census Clara & daughter Rose visit her sister Charlotte. In 1881 census Charlotte's five children are aged 6,7,9,11,12,14,19,20, so perhaps it ran in the Bramston family.
It was assumed that people would want to register the births of their children because of the benefits of doing so. But non-registration is very rare after the 1840s and it must be extremely unusual for any respectable middle class couple, let alone a vicar and his wife, not to have registered a child.
I think we can discount any adoptions for the four children who have missing ONS/GRO entries as their births with, dates that agree with later records, are all listed in the local papers having done a search in FMP.
Well Charlotte wasn't a Bramston as these children all have mother's maiden name Du Cane. Their father William G Luard was (I think) Rev. Bixby Luard's brother (making Clara his sister-in-law and Rose his niece as stated on the census). However, looking at the records for this family, there is again a gap in the birth registrations, as the births of the 14- and 12-year old daughters (Edith and Amy) don't appear to have been registered. Again they were born in Witham, around the same time (mid-late 1860s) as the 3 'unregistered' children of Rev. Luard (excluding Kate as she was later).
I agree, the newspaper reports coupled with the timings of baptisms that others have reported make adoption seem unlikely.
Copies of register pages are supposed to be sent to the GRO quarterly, so it is difficult to imagine that a problem would be allowed to persist for so long that multiple children from the same family were affected.
Last time I checked there were no local BMD projects for Essex (or, sadly, any of the counties my ancestors came from).
Sorry, senior moment Charlotte not Bramston.
And as it happens, my husband's great-grandfather and great-granduncle were born in Witham in the late 1860s and both of their births appear in the GRO and FreeBMD records. Their father was a policeman, so again would be expected to abide by the rules.