How to find out if someone has died.

if you know when they were born you could try the government registry office site, they have deaths recorded up to 2021. it helps if you know the area they lived in when they died

a bit of a roundabout way if you know her maiden name [if married] and a few bits about her family and she was around in 1939, on the register for that year details are redacted if the person is still alive anyone with an ancestry/find my past can look. It won't be instantly removed, so if it was a very recent death it might not show up but it showed up pretty quickly with my parents
Alternatively ask in local facebook groups

Look up the person's name and 'Obituary'. Or maybe Find a Grave. Or call the parish where he lived. Or look up his family on Facebook.

you could write to her neighbours to find out

As several people have said, if they have died in Scotland this will be available free on the Scotlandspeople website. If you know where they lived (and possibly died) and they have a distinctive name it may be easy to find them. If they have a common name it then means further investigation. Although internet copies of death registrations are cheap, about £1.50, that doesn't apply to recent deaths. A certificate costs in the region of £12.50 or more with no guarantee you will be asking for her record.
I'll PM you and if you provide me with her full name and details of where she may have died I will take a look and send you what I find on Scotlandspeople free.

Send a card or letter and put your name and address on the back. One of the free name and address stickers you get from charities is ideal. I only found out my brother had died by doing that, he had been dead for 3 years and I kept sending cards etc and finally put a sticker on the back of a Christmas card and it was returned "DECEASED" return to sender. From that I managed to get a death certificate and find a long lost nephew who had given the details to the Register of Deaths of my brothers demise.

yggdrasil, I put an address label on backs of envelopes at Christmas /Birthdays if I'm not sure if person is still with us. With Covid it is easy for someone to pass away or move to another address and in the light of lockdowns etc, contact can be lost.

I have access to Ancestry if you need it. I can look up the U.K. & Ireland Obituary Index.

You can Private message me if you wish

I had the same problem and couldn't receive any response of an old friend of my mothers (both in age and time of the friendship) so I wrote to the house next door. Knowing mum's friend lived at No 90 I wrote to the occupier at No 92 and enclosed SAE asking if Mrs next door still alive and I am afraid I did receive a reply and she had sadly passed away. But of course you have to rely on good neighbours.

Some of the ancestry sites will offer a free 7 day trial that costs nothing. It's easy to cancel before the trial ends. Might help.

try the friend's local paper and search for death notices

The BMD free site is good, within limits, but is not up to date at all so if you think your friend may have died within the last few years it is unlikely her death will be on it.

Family Search is free.

if that person owned their home, then look at the gov.uk land registry website to see if that property was sold.

Many years ago in pre-computer days, not having received a birthday card from my godmother and no response to two letters to her, I contacted the local vicar who looked her up in the funeral register and put me in contact with her neighbour who kindly wrote to me.

Free BMD OK but doesn't cover recent years yet. Try obituary notices in local papers.

I have found similar information by looking up local obituaries. If she has children, they may be on facebook, which might lead you to the information you need. Or you could send them a message on fb messenger. If they have an unusual surname, this will make the search easier.

oodles

a bit of a roundabout way if you know her maiden name [if married] and a few bits about her family and she was around in 1939, on the register for that year details are redacted if the person is still alive anyone with an ancestry/find my past can look. It won't be instantly removed, so if it was a very recent death it might not show up but it showed up pretty quickly with my parents
Alternatively ask in local facebook groups

It's not a very accurate way to do it! Find my oast will be first to open up redacted entries as they hold the "rights" however I know from personal research and from fellow family historians thst records thst should be redacted are sometimes open and records of people who died decades ago are still closed.

Have you tried typing in this person's address on Zoopla or Right Move? I did this to see if a relative had died that I had not heard from within the year. The house came up straight away showing it had been sold. I then rang the estate agents who confirmed that she had passed away. Failing that maybe the gov.uk website and search under find a will. Hope you get to find out what has happened to your friend, it's always so difficult when you're not sure what's happened, and you have not been informed by anyone else either.

Is it just me who finds it quite scarey about how much info is so freely available about our lives. That said. I had the same problem No responses to letters or cards sent to an old lady I had known fòr over 50 years who lived far away. Never thought to contact the neighbours which is is a really good tip. I eventually saw property for sale on the internet and contacted the estate agent who confirmed it was an empty property as the resident had moved to a nursing home but had subsequently died. Not sure they should have shared that info though. I asked if they would forward a card to her relatives on my behalf but sadly never got a reply. It has propted me to instruct my children to contact everyone on my Christmas card list when I die and ask for them to spread the word to anyone they think may have known me.

I have 2 friends in different nursing homes. One has no close relatives so unless I phoned the nursing home I wouldn't find out if she had passed away. The other one has a family who I've never met and although her son let me know she had gone into a nursing home I don't know if he would let me know if she had passed away. My plan is to send Christmas cards to both friends ( and include a return address) in the hope the cards would be returned if they were no longer there.

“records of people who died decades ago are still closed.”
Records cannot be opened without solid proof that a person has died.
Once a person’s one hundredth birth date has passed the record will open unless they are still alive.

This thread is informative as I was trying to find out about a friend who had died. We were told she had passed away this year by a friend of her sister’s (she strangely didn’t tell us herself) who was very vague, saying my friend didn’t want any fuss. I feel like she hasn’t died because there has been no confirmation. I can’t find anything on any of the sites on this thread. We were close when I was growing up, more like cousins and have seen each other occasionally over the years so I would have liked to say goodbye. I have the sister’s address but can’t bring myself to write to her.

I'm also trying to find out if someone I was very close to has died, so pleased with all the ideas above. I think I'll try the Christmas card with my address on the back first. Thanks.

Is it not common to put a return address on your cards?
I always do even though I haven't moved in 20 years just in case the cards needs to be returned for any reason or if my friend needs my address.
Plus I get so many return address labels from charities that I'll never be able to use them all up.