Check if a person is deceased
Find out what you can do with our API...
Check the bereavement register to ascertain whether or not a person is deceased.
Screen your marketing data against our deceased persons data to ensure contact with deceased persons is not attempted. This helps to minimise the distress caused to relatives and avoid any negative publicity for your organisation.
Where available, we will also give you a date of death.
Please note that if you intend to screen 100 or more people, you should use our deceased_bulk method, which is more cost-effective and efficient.
Mandatory Parameters
Name | Description |
---|---|
api_key or javascript_key |
Use your API key if invoking server-side. If invoking from the browser via JavaScript, generate a JavaScript key using the javascript_key method. |
postcode | The UK postal code. |
surname | The person's surname. |
forename | The person's first name. |
premises | The house number or name. |
Optional Parameters
Name | Description |
---|---|
client | You can optionally include an identifier for your final client or user. This is logged in your usage log and you will be able to view your usage statistics by client. |
output | Set to json for a JSON response; the default response is XML.
Not applicable to the SOAP API. |
callback | When using JSON, specify a JSONP wrapper in which the JSON response is to be wrapped. |
street | The street name. |
Returned Values
The XML response is contained within a <deceased_res>
element.
Name | Description |
---|---|
status | Returns ok if the operation has succeeded, or error if an
error has occurred; Returns the error_code for error details. |
error_code | Returns the error code when the status is error . See below for error codes. |
t2a_version_number | The current API version number. |
credit_used | The number of credits used in order to execute the request. |
mode | Returns normal or test when executed in the
free test mode. |
date_of_death | The actual date of death, where known, in the format YYYY-MM-DD. |
date_of_death_estimated | The actual date of death where only estimated, in the format YYYY-MM-DD. |
Error Codes
See the common error codes. There are no errors which are specific to this method.
Free Test Mode
When operating in the free test mode errors are returned if mandatory parameters are missing, or it returns a dummy data response, in an identical format to a real response.
Note that the mode
is returned as test
when the method is operating in the free test mode.
Example XML Response
<?xml version="1.0"?> <deceased_res> <mode>test</mode> <t2a_version_number>1.0.0</t2a_version_number> <status>ok</status> <date_of_death>1942-02-34</date_of_death> <date_of_death_estimated/> </deceased_res>
Example JSON Response
{ "date_of_death":"1942-02-34", "date_of_death_estimated":"", "mode":"test", "t2a_version_number":"1.0.0", "status":"ok" }