British India Office Deaths & Burials
Discover details about the deaths of your ancestors who died in the UK, British India, Burma and other territories connected to the India office (St Helena, Sumatra, Kuwait, Aden, Penang, Macao). Discover where, when and in some cases how they died as well as where they were buried.
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Discover details about the deaths of your ancestors who died in the UK, British India, Burma and other territories connected to the India office (St Helena, Sumatra, Kuwait, Aden, Penang, Macao). Discover where, when and in some cases how they died as well as where they were buried.
Learn about these records
The amount of information you can discover can vary, but the British India Office death and burial records usually include a combination of the following information about your ancestors:
Death and burial details
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Name of deceased
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Date of death
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Place of death
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Date of burial
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Place of burial
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Officiating minister
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Rites of burial (occasionally)
Biographical information
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Age at death
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Occupation
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Place of birth
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Cause of death (from mid- 19th century onwards)
The collection is provided by three different sources: The British Library’s British in India Collection transcriptions licensed from FIBIS (Families in British India Society); and transcriptions held by the Kabristan Archives.
Most records from the British in India Collection include an image and a transcript of the original document. FIBIS and Kabristan Archives records include a transcript only.
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585,202 deaths and burials are recorded.
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The records are made up of British India Office ecclesiastical returns, British India Office deaths of staff in uncovenanted (lower grade, no contract) state and, British India Office All Presidency burials.
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The ecclesiastical returns relate almost entirely to European and Eurasian Christians; few local converts are included. It is thought that roughly seventy five per cent of the information recorded in India was transmitted to London.
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The Ecclesiastical returns include people from all walks of life: civil servants, army and navy personnel, medical officers, scientists, business people, traders, travellers, missionaries.
Almost 2.5 million British 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) records 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 servants’ deaths, military family fund, cadet patrons and allocations.
Kabristan Archives is dedicated to preserving graveyards in Ireland, the Indian sub-continent, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, and more. The archives have provided thousands of transcriptions created from graveyards in India.
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.