Half a million WW1 hospital records now on Forces War Records

From Forces War Records (www.forces-war-records.co.uk):

Half a million records now available to search

Wiltshire based genealogy site Forces War Records have just reached the first milestone of half a million named WW1 hospital records released, enabling members to search and find ancestors and family members via transcribed original hospital documents.

Forces War Record's latest collection - Military Hospitals Admissions and Discharge Registers WW1 (MH106 at The National Archives) has now topped half a million. Available to fully subscribed members who can search to find ancestors, details of their injuries and treatments and track their journey back to the battlefield, or back home. The collection is a major achievement, not just for the company but historically, as it could now be the only remaining genealogy source for WW1 servicemen and women due to many records being lost or destroyed during The Blitz. The highly skilled team of 70 plus experts at the Forces War Records office are still working to release the remaining records – an estimated additional 1 million.

CEO Dominic Hayhoe says, “The team here have worked tirelessly to get this many records released as quickly as possible, we're incredibly proud to have this level of skill, dedication and commitment within the company”.

The Military Hospitals Admissions and Discharge Registers WW1 Collection

A collection of records of soldiers' admission to, or discharge from, hospital in the First World War. After the war most medical and hospital records were destroyed. The rest were given by the Royal Army Medical Corps

(RAMC) to the Ministry Of Health. Just a representative selection (no more than two per cent of the total) remain, housed at The National Archives, where they are coded MH106

Each entry for a patient treated by the medical services includes:

• Name
• Rank
• Regiment and sub unit
• Age and completed years of service
• Completed months with field force
• Date of admission
• Date of discharge
• Injury / Illness
• Any additional observations by medical practitioners
• Plus details of movement back to the front or to another hospital

(With thanks to Jennifer Holmes)

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.