Who are you looking for?
Find the births and baptisms of ancestors who lived or worked in India and other territories administered by the India office (Pakistan, Burma, Bangladesh, St Helena, Sumatra, Aden, Penang, Macao). Discover where and when they were born and baptised as well as other useful biographical information.
The amount of information you can discover can vary, but the British India Office birth and baptism records usually include a combination of the following information about your ancestors:
Birth and baptism details
Biographical information
The collection is made up of two different record sets, the British Library’s British in India Collection and transcriptions licensed from FIBIS (Families in British India Society).
Most records from the British in India Collection include an image and a transcript of the original document.
FIBIS records include a transcript only.
The almost 2.5 million British In India records are sourced from the original India Office Records and Private Papers held by the British Library. These records comprise the archives of the East India Company (1600-1858), the Board of Control or Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India (1784 – 1858), the India Office (1858-1947), the Burma Office (1937-1947), and a number of related British agencies.
The Families In British India Society (FIBIS) transcripts contain an estimated 35,000 records from 1698 to 1947. They include baptisms, marriage and burial indexes, register office marriages, cadetship application papers, wills index, Indian Navy pension funds, orphan society, civil servant’s deaths, military family fund, cadet patrons and allocations.
In compliance with data protection laws fewer details and no images are available for births dating to after 1915 and marriages after 1930. Full details are available to researchers who visit the British Library in person.