"Lost" Texas Death Certificates More than 30 million vital
records are stored in row after row of mobile bookshelves at the
Texas Department of Health, in Austin, with births and marriages
in blue binders and deaths and divorces in red binders. The
State of Texas required its county offices to begin registering
deaths on 1 January 1903, filing the record at the county
courthouse and submitting a duplicate to the State. "Penalty for
Failure to Report Within Ten Days" was "$5.00 to $50.00."
Curiously, other certificates from that same year required
physicians and undertakers to complete a death certificate
within twenty-four hours or pay a fine of up to $100.00. Despite
warnings, the law was not strictly enforced and registrations
were grossly incomplete for several years. In fact, registration
did not reach 90% completeness until 1933. A statewide sampling
of early death records reveals poor record-keeping by clerks,
apparently apathetic to an added responsibility. In spite of the
convenience of uncomplicated,