(updated March 2019 and January 2020 – see example of this method – Using the GRO Image Browse Tool )
Sharing a tool I use to browse images of the Civil Birth, Marriage and Death registers on the IrishGenealogy website. The tool adds a selection of next / previous links to make it easier to move backwards and forwards through the images without having to manually edit the URL. This can be useful to help locate mis-indexed entries, or records with missing index entries.
Note the BMD image browse tool currently only works in FireFox browser
see BMD Image Browse (IrelandGen.com)
To use, first locate a record for the district and date range of interest using the IrishGenealogy website in the usual way, and open the register image. Copy the full URL from the address bar. (ensure this starts with the https and ends with .pdf) :
Open the BMD Image Browse Tool, paste in the copied URL, and click the submit button.
The Next and Previous buttons move one page forward or backward through the register images. Also available are +-5, +-10 and +-50 links which skip backward or forward in larger steps.
To start a new search, click the [reset] link to the top right.
If the captcha screen is displayed instead of a register image, select the appropriate images and enter your name as usual and the register image will display.
The full references with page numbers are available on the FamilySearch version of the BMD Index. These are also available on FindMyPast and Ancestry.
The tool was primarily developed for Chrome and also tested on FireFox, and on Safari on iPad, but should also function on other modern browsers.
Note : the browse function adds and subtracts from the image number, so does not account for entries with multiple images – e.g.those with 1 2 3 links (These use a letter suffix on the image filename – e.g. 5864623.pdf , 5864623a.pdf , 5864623b.pdf etc)
See also the revised 1901-1911 Census image browse tool and the new Tithe Applotment Image Browse (updated Jan. 2018).
For records on IrishGenealogy without an image link, or where the image is in the wrong volume or district, I start off by establishing the full index references, i.e. the year/quarter, volume and page using the BMD Index on FamilySearch (or FindMyPast/Ancestry), and then look for other records in the same year/quarter, registration district and volume, ideally with a close page number, ideally with nice unusual names and start the browse with these..
An additional source that can help provide clues is the collection of extracted civil records on FamilySearch, i.e. births(*), marriages and deaths, these include partial details on the records and some include a page number as part of the ‘address’ field – e.g. “..539, Maynooth, Kildare” some records include details under a ‘Reference Id’ in the expandable panel to the right – e.g. “p508 ln233” , This collection includes transcript on many (but not all) births marriages & deaths between the start of civil records and about 1881.
(* some of these births incorrectly use the caption ‘Christening Place’ instead of birth place)