>This was because the government only issued birth certificates in the nearby city, and being poor & rural, it took time to get there by bus, etc.
I guess I don't see the connection.
Why wouldn't it take a week to get the certificate for most people, and why wouldn't the authorities distinguish the birth date from the filing date?
In the US, the sort of birth certificate I have seen - from less than a hundred years ago - has three dates: Born on, Date filed, Date issued. The last two might be the same, but different from "Born on".
People who were born in the 19th century, on the other hand, may not have any documentation at all. I don't know the details, but I remember it being mentioned that nobody knew exactly how old my grandmother was, least of all herself.
I'm not sure it was a matter of transportation or poverty necessarily - just that everything wasn't controlled by documentation back then. Somewhere I think I read that passports weren't a thing until some time in the early 20th century. Maybe it changed because of WWI?
I think the implied missing detail is that there was, or was perceived to be, a requirement to register a birth in a timely manner - currently in the UK there is a requirement to register a birth is within 42 days (6 weeks), but I have in my head that at some point it was two weeks.
Therefore people might be tempted to lie, saying that the babe was born within the registration deadline.
Or it was just that in the time between the birth happening and being registered they forgot the exact date, and either rounded it themselves, or it was done by the official registering the birth due to imprecise data ("When was the baby born?" "Two and a half weeks ago").
I guess I don't see the connection.
Why wouldn't it take a week to get the certificate for most people, and why wouldn't the authorities distinguish the birth date from the filing date?
In the US, the sort of birth certificate I have seen - from less than a hundred years ago - has three dates: Born on, Date filed, Date issued. The last two might be the same, but different from "Born on".
People who were born in the 19th century, on the other hand, may not have any documentation at all. I don't know the details, but I remember it being mentioned that nobody knew exactly how old my grandmother was, least of all herself.
I'm not sure it was a matter of transportation or poverty necessarily - just that everything wasn't controlled by documentation back then. Somewhere I think I read that passports weren't a thing until some time in the early 20th century. Maybe it changed because of WWI?