Western Front Association announces pension cards look-up service

The Western Front Association has announced a new look-up service for the 6.5 million First World War pension records cards that it rescued not too long ago in November (see http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/world-war-1-pension-cards-saved.html).

The cost per first look up is £25, plus £5 per successive look ups - with a maximum of five per request. If no records are found, you can get a refund of £15 for the first lookup and £3 per each of the following. It gets a bit complicated though - if your first lookup isn't found, the first £25 charge will be transferred to a successive lookup.

From the site, the following restrictions on access have been announced to comply with data protection and the basis under which the records have been given to the association:

"...if anyone is named on the card or ledger who may be have been born less than 100 years ago, then you must have a genuine reason for such a request, ie the persons you name on the request form must have a valid connection to you (eg a relative). You cannot use this form to undertake lookup requests for third parties where the card content will compromise the 100 year rule."

The full announcement on the look up service is at www.westernfrontassociation.com/about-the-wfa/175-pension-records/2961-pension-record-cards-manual-lookup-request.html - and for details on the cards themselves (and make no mistake, this is a major new WW1 resource) are available at www.westernfrontassociation.com/great-war-current-news/pension-records.html.

(With thanks to Ken Nisbet of SAFHS)

UPDATE: note the following also

"The WFA intends to determine the best methods of digitisation with archiving organisations, and to discuss potential partnerships to undertake the work. We also intend to seek out sources of grant and other funding for the task, and we will soon launch a fund-raising campaign to help preserve the records in the meantime. Prior to the records being digitised and made available online, we will offer a manual look-up of records through application via this website, in the near future."

Chris

My new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, is now available from Pen and Sword. For my other genealogy books, please visit  http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html; whilst for my online Scottish based genealogy courses please visit the Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd site.