The central database for UK burials and cremations

Deceased Online is the first central database of statutory burial and cremation registers for the UK and Republic of Ireland -- a unique resource for family history researchers and professional genealogists

Until now, to search these records you had to approach about 3,000 burial authorities and nearly 250 crematoria in the UK alone, each independently holding their own registers, mostly as old fragile books. No official central repository exists.

Deceased Online is changing this. We are making it possible for burial and cremation authorities around the country to convert their register records, maps and photographs into digital form and bring them together into a central searchable collection.

Our growing database, holding records from 1837 onwards, can provide invaluable information for researching family trees, and can reveal previously unknown family links from other interments recorded in the same grave.

The site was launched in July 2008, and over the coming months and years we will be building a substantial database of tens of millions of burial and cremation records. We are continually adding data from all over the UK and Ireland as new burial authorities and crematoria join, so keep checking. We have provided a page here where you can see easily whose data was added and when, and what information is available in each case.

Searching is FREE, and can be restricted as required to country, region, county, or individual burial authority or crematorium. If you register with Deceased Online here, you will be able to purchase credits online, which you can spend to access further information associated with any of the found records.

Depending on what has been provided by the originating authority, the further information might include:

• burial and cremation register entries in computerised form*
• digital scans of register pages*
• scans of book of remembrance pages
• grave details and other interments in a grave (key to making new family links)
• pictures of graves and memorials
• maps showing the exact locations of graves and memorials.

Information gained from the Deceased Online service can help the professional genealogist and those casually researching their ancestry:

• Extend your family tree with new names discovered from other people intered in a grave
• Discover information not recorded elsewhere, such as addresses, occupations, age at death and for older records* who applied for the burial.
• Discover where a body is buried or where the remains of a cremation ended up.
• Print off original register scans, memorial photographs and maps for your family scrap book.

Some authorities have completely or partially transcribed their registers into computer readable form, while others have done neither. Where registers have not been transcribed, they will have been scanned and indexed, offering a picture of the original page containing the entry of interest. In some cases you will have the option of viewing both computerised register entry and page scan.

The majority of historical burial records in the UK are still in paper form. We are initiating a drive therefore, and providing all the required services, to get all these registers scanned, indexed and stored on computer. As well as preserving fragile documents, this is a major step towards making them publicly accessible on the Internet.

The Deceased Online web site is new, and we are developing it continually. Forthcoming enhancements include:

• Annual subscription membership to complement pay-per-view access
• Vouchers for those who don't have credit or debit cards
• An online shop, where you will be able to purchase such things as high quality images of register pages, and formal documents showing burial and cremation details.

If you have any suggestions for improving the site, then we would like to hear from you. You can send us a message here.

More help on using the site can be found here.

Our Terms & Conditions for using the site can be viewed here.

If you are responsible for burial or cremation records and would like to see them on Deceased Online, you can contact us here.

We hope you find the site valuable and enjoy using it.

 

*Note: To comply with the Data Protection Act 1998, information about applicants for funerals within the previous 100 years is restricted. This means that details of applicants stored in computerised registers for this period are not made available, and the corresponding areas of scanned register images are masked off. Individual preferences of contributing authorities may mean that additional restrictions are in place for some of the more recent records from some authorities. Any restrictions specific to a cemetery of crematorium will be explained in the entry for the establishment in the list of Contributors.