Holyoke, Mass

Birth Certificate

25 January 1920

Registration of Births

“You see it’s just like this” said City Clerk John F. Sheehan as he placed a September birth return on its proper pile on the desk; “the law requires that the physician shall file a return of a birth within 48 hours. At that time the child is often not named, the excitement of the event being such that the name does not at once intrude, as it were, and the blank comes to the city clerk’s office with only the surname. But the law also requires that the parents shall also make returns to the city clerk within 40 days. This gives a chance for selecting a very choice and agreeable name like Selucia for girls, or Annubannerat for boys.”

“Unfortunately,” continues City Clerk Sheehan, “the parents do not always take the trouble to do this. So at the end of a year, so afar as our records show, a large number of infants in the city have received no name.”

“Why not give them a number?” a newspaper man asked flippantly.

The city clerk rapped on the desk and continued: “Now this makes trouble in this way. If later any of these unnamed children start to leave for Canada, for instance, with the idea of returning, they have to show their birth certificate to get back into the United States or else they have to deal with the officials.

“Why the other day a child was born and, through carelessness, it was entered as a female, when in fact it was a good husky boy. Some years later they came after the birth certificate. They had made no entry of the child’s name and our records showed that there was no male child born that day of that surname. And believe me, it took some time to hunt up the physician in the case and correct the matter. An amended copy of the return had to be sent to Boston.” City Clerk Sheehan is now sending an addressed postal to the parents after his physician’s return comes in so that they may promptly file their return and save them trouble as well as keeping the records complete..

From The Springfield Republican.