My favourite website FreeBMD tells me that in 1887 Theresa May Harrison was born in the Stroud area, county of Gloucester. In the same quarter of the year, in the same registration district, the birth of May Theresa Harrison was also registered. Was this a mistake (on the original, the copy, the index or the transcription) when really there was one baby girl perhaps entered twice, with names reversed? Or maybe two girls from separate families who coincidentally, or knowingly, named their children this way?
In the past, my choice was either to live with such uncertainty or pay to purchase a copy of the birth certificates. I don't usually allow my curiosity to spend money, although for direct ancestors I may pay the price. However, recently I have discovered a new approach to finding the mother's maiden name at no cost, except my own time.
The General Register Office (GRO) for England and Wales provides an online search tool for a new index of historical birth and death records (see their Frequently Asked Questions). This new, online index has been created directly from the record copies held at the GRO and contains additional data fields, such as the mother's maiden name for births. (That was only in the traditional birth registration indexes from September 1911 onwards.) Beware, the new index also contains new errors.
The GRO works with copies of registrations - the originals remaining in the county where the event took place. Gloucestershire Registration Service (GRS) and Gloucestershire Archives in conjunction with the Gloucestershire Family History Society (GFHS) have produced their own index for birth, marriage and death (BMD) registers held in the archives there (see Gloucestershire BMD Indexes).
Both of those sources show the mother's maiden name for Theresa May was Burrows. The mother's maiden name for May Theresa was also Burrows. From the entry number of the original register in Gloucestershire we can know that Theresa May was registered first and May Theresa was the next entry. Also, there's a death registration for May Theresa aged 12 months. Meanwhile, the surviving Theresa appears in the 1891, 1901 and 1911 census records with her parents and siblings, then in 1916 gets married.
So, it looks like there really were two separate babies registered and no mistake. But what about them having the same mother's maiden name ... the same mother's name ... the same mother's ... the same mother?! Twins?! It seems that I needed to look elsewhere - for a baptism entry or other information which names the parents. Indeed, there is a pair of baptism records which lists Calvin Edmund and Elizabeth Hannah as the parents for the pair of girls. Curiosity satisfied!