Guest Post - The CWGC Online Archive

I've not run these in a while, but Ken Nisbet has just been in touch with a detailed outline of the new CWGC archive, now available online at www.cwgc.org, very worthy of a Guest Post label!

The CWGC Online Archive

The archives consists in the main of three sets of documents and in many cases not all sets will be present. The documents can be downloaded as JPEG’s

Grave Registration

This is the most common document, which can consist of two parts:

The Register for the cemetery or the memorial, if your relative is commemorated on a mem
orial such as the Menin Gate at Ypres or the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme this likely to be the only document. This is the original register and may show if there was any additions to the register or in one case I looked at for the Thiepval Memorial it had the details crossed out showing that the body had been found later on and where it was now buried.

Grave Registration Form which gives the name of the burial place, its map reference, the Regimental Number, Name, Rank and Initials, Date of Death, Cross Erected or Grave Registration Unit Date, Plot Row & Grave Number

If the Grave Registration Form is present and your relative is buried in a cemetery the other document likely to be present is the “Headstone” document which shows

a) The burial place, its map reference
b) Plot Reference

Then for each headstone:

1st Line Badge Design No and Layout No
2nd Line Number & Rank
3rd Line Initials, Name and Honours
4th Line Regiment
5th Line Date of Death (In any instances where the entry “None” appears in line 6 the age will be omitted from the Headstone and the date of death centred laterally)
6th Line Age
7th Religious Emblem (Centre of Stone) this could be a cross or the Jewish Star for Jewish personnel
8th line to be stencilled on the foot of the headstone below ground level, the plot number, row number, grave number

The second page shows what text if any was to be entered on the stone for unknown soldiers “ Known unto God”, where the family had requested text to be added it shows the text and the name and address of the relative


Concentration Document (Exhumation and Reburials)

This document was created when bodies were removed from burial plots or cemeteries that could not be maintained or controlled by the Imperial War Graves Commission / Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It shows the name of the cemetery of reburial , plot number and grave number for that cemetery.

It shows the name of the cemetery or the map reference for where the individual was originally buried if a cross had been erected, the name of the individual if known and their regimental particulars, the means of identification and were any effects forwarded to the base. For my own research it showed that Cyril Broom a 2nd Lieutenant in the 10th Battalion H.L.I. who was killed on the 15th July 1915 was originally buried in Salome Churchyard German Extension, a cross had been erected and he was indentified by this and his officer’s uniform. Cyril was then reburied in Rue Petillon Military Cemetery at Fleurbaix. In another example, Robert Speedon Macfarlane 2nd Lieutenant 15th Battalion H.L.I. killed on the 3rd July 1916 on the Somme front, was buired not in a cemetery but in an unnamed burial plot which is identified with a map reference, a cross had been erected and he was identified by his uniform and boots and he was then reburied at Serre Road Cemetery No 2.

* Ken Nisbet is the Secretary of the Scottish Association of Family History Societies (www.safhs.org.uk) and Secretary of the Scottish Genealogy Society (www.scotsgenealogy.com).

He is also the author of The Register of Corrected Entries and Its Use for Family History.





Chris

Now available for UK research is the new second edition of the best selling Tracing Your Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians, whilst my new book British and Irish Newspapers is also now out. And FindmyPast - please reinstate the original Scottish census citations on your new site.

Guest post - Women in India

I mentioned a few days ago that London based genealogist Emma Jolly has just had her new Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors book published by Pen and Sword. I am currently about a third of the way through the book, enjoying it immensely and looking forward tonight to reading about the various military and EIC regiments in India in Chapter 5 (particularly as one of my ancestors makes a guest appearance!). One of the key things about the book is the sense of the society that existed in all spheres of influence within the country. Emma's kindly agreed to do a second guest post for this blog (her previous Scottish GENES post is available here), and this time she takes a look at the women of India. Enjoy!

Recently I have written a guide for those tracing their British and Anglo-Indian ancestors in India. While researching the book, I read a number of fascinating and revealing accounts of life in India written by Britons and Anglo-Indians. Some of those writers are very well-known. Rudyard Kipling, for example, needs no introduction.

However, other authors may not be familiar. Despite this, their words deserve to be read as they provide a unique insight into lives led in India during almost four hundred years of British influence and rule.

Amongst my favourite works are the memoirs of women who lived in India, including and Julia Charlotte Maitland (1808-1864) and Maud Diver (1867-1945). Female writers tended to include greater detail on social life, food, medicine, and matters relating to children. All these are particularly evident in the letters of the gossipy Eliza Fay (1756-1816) (see post at http://blog.genealogic.co.uk/).

One woman writer remains anonymous. “A lady resident” published her guide for fellow women in the sub-continent, The Englishwoman in India: information for ladies on their outfit, furniture [&c.] . . . in 1864, just a few years after the demise of the East India Company and the creation of the India Office.

Like me, the lady resident was a keen fan of curry. Food is covered in detail in the book, and she includes delicious-sounding recipes, like this one for “Mint Chutnee”:

½ lb. green mint leaves.
1 ounce red chillies
¼ lb. salt.
¼ lb. raisins or kismis.
2 ounces green ginger.
¼ 1lb. brown sugar.
1 ounce garlic or onion

Pound with a quarter pint of vinegar, mix well
and pour over the chutnees half a pint of boiling
vinegar: when cold, stopper the bottles.
N.B. Country vinegar answers perfectly for most chutnees.

Although the lady resident is happy for children to eat spicy food, she warns of avoiding “tamarinds and cocoa-nut in the amah’s curry” whilst the amah (ayah) or wet-nurse is feeding a British infant. In order to ensure the amah’s comfort and to encourage the flow of her milk, the resident advises “a warm bath, with soap-nuts, and oil for her hair at least once a week”.

Some of her advice seems odd when compared with historical data. Her belief that, “In many respects, India is a more healthy country for very young children than England” is not supported by details in burial registers. She moderates the comment by saying that she is not referring to “the children of European soldiers, among whom, from many causes, the mortality is fearful; but among the upper classes, where there is no exposure to the sun, and proper food and accommodation . . .”

The contrast between the lives of upper and working class Britons in India is apparent here and in other primary texts. Too often the British in India are lumped together. Yet close research reveals a number of strata in work and society. The more I research the British in India, the greater I find the differences in lifestyle between the classes.

More experiences of women in India can be found in excellent collections of memoirs, diaries and letters in UK archives, such as those in European Manuscripts (MSS Eur) at the British Library and at the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge.

The Englishwoman in India: information for ladies on their outfit, furniture [&c.] . ., and Julia Charlotte Maitland’s Letters from Madras: during the years 1838-1839 can be read in full at http://books.google.com The Original Letters from India of Mrs Eliza Fay can be read at http://archive.org

Emma Jolly runs the London based Genealogic research service (www.genealogic.co.uk), with her particular interests in London and British India. In 2008 she was awarded Your Family Tree magazine's Beginner Book of the Year Award for her first book, Family History for Kids. Emma writes regularly for family history publications. Her latest book Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors was published by Pen & Sword in March 2012. Further details can be found at: www.facebook.com/TracingYourBritishIndianAncestors

Guest Post - Scottish WW1 Pensions Appeal Tribunals

An irregular feature of the old Scottish GENES blog was a series of guest posts that I published on all sorts of subjects concerned with Scottish family history. I will hopefully be adding some more this year to British GENES, but in the meantime, here is one of my fave posts from Tunji Lees, following a meeting we had last year in Perth. 

If you would like to make a guest post for British GENES, do drop me a note - the only requirement is that it involves something of interest to those who wish to carry out their family history research! 
Over to Tunji...!

I've recently discovered a great, little-known source for people researching the service of their First World War ancestors in Scotland. There are a set of post-WW1 pension appeal records held by the National Records of Scotland (www.nrscotland.gov.uk). The records are catalogued under the reference PT6 and contain the pension application records of 1000s of Scottish soldiers -and next of kin of soldiers (usually widows) - who suffered from injuries sustained in the war, or died after the war due to injuries. These appear to be the Scottish equivalent of the PIN26 series for England and Wales (which, unlike the Scottish PT6 series, is indexed). Whereas the PT26 series appears to only be a selection of the disability pensions awarded to English and Welsh soldiers after the First World War, the Scottish PT6 series appears to be complete. And as you'll see below, the Scottish records are also quite detailed.

The applications are organised in boxes alphabetically by month, from November 1919 (reference PT6/1), to December 1932 (reference PT6/288). That's about 29 meters (or 95 feet) of pension records! There are also records from the same series covering post-WW2 disability pension applications, however seeing as they are closed for 75 years, the first set (those from 1945) will only be available in 2021.

It doesn't appear as if any genealogists are aware of the existence of these records, as they aren’t mentioned in the NAS publication Tracing your Scottish Ancestors, or in any guides to tracing WW1 ancestry that I've read, although they're a fantastic source of information on Scottish army ancestors.

Because most WW1 service records were burnt during WW2 (surviving records from record series WO363 and WO364 are indexed on ancestry.co.uk), it can be difficult tracing your ancestor's service during WW1. In fact, they say you only have about a 30% chance in finding a record of your ancestor's service. Hopefully, these set of applications can raise that chance to at least 40% or 50%.

If you think your ancestor might have suffered from a disability due to the war, or died in the years afterwards, then I would strongly recommend consulting them. Many of the applications were actually rejected, so even if you know your ancestor didn't receive a disability pension, it's still possible there's a record of him applying for one. It's not clear to me whether these only cover army soldiers, or for other services also.

I've summarised the information that a typical pension file will include here below: (the layout on the actual applications is different)

General information
-Name of the soldier (+ name of the applicant, and relationship to soldier, if not the same)
-His address
-Age
-Pre-enlisting occupation
-Employer before the war (on later applications only)
-Employer after the war (on later applications only)
-Insurance society (on later applications only)

Military information
-Rank & unit
-Service no
-When first attested
-When discharged
-Reason for discharge
-Details on pre-war service (if applicable)
-Details on service 1914-1921 (when and where he served, and in what units)

Information on application
-Date of the hearing and in which courtroom it was held (the hearings were held at 3 Parliament Square, Edinburgh)
-Disability from which the man claimed to be suffering
-Whether the appeal was allowed or disallowed (many were in fact disallowed)
-If allowed, how much the applicant received, and whether he got a lump sum or a fixed rate, and for how long

Each file also has some information on the soldier's medical history. From around 1923, the application files start to get thicker and thicker, some having up to 10 or more pages of medical history, detailing the medical condition of the soldier throughout, and after, the war, as well as his date and cause of death if he died. Some of the files also include correspondence relating to the application.The application records are held off-site, and will need to be ordered 24 hours in advance.

Occasionally, I've come across a file which had not been filed under the correct letter within the box, and once, I came across a file that had been filed in the wrong box.

I believe these records have great potential for being a useful source for WW1 family history research. The problem with them however is that, without an index, it can be very time consuming looking for a pension record unless you know exactly when it was applied for.

I hope someone will see fit to digitise or at least index them. Perhaps this could be a project for a genealogy society, or a commercial website (findmypast?). I can't see the NRS indexing or digitising them any time soon, as I know they're already quite busy with digitising valuation rolls, and other records.

Tunji Lees is a keen family historian who at the age of 21 resides and teaches in Austria, but who has already spent considerable time in France, Belgium, Yorkshire and Nigeria.

He has a deep interest in his own Scottish ancestry, and is an active participant on the ScotFamTree forum.

(With thanks to Tunji)

Chris