Radley College archive

When researching a man for my British Army Ancestors Facebook page I stumbled across the Radley College archive which is a collection of digitised photographs and books relating to Radley College in Oxfordshire. There are specific collections of portraits of former students in army uniform but there are also many servicemen to be found in photos like this one, in this case prefects photographed in 1907.

The majority of these men would have gone on to serve as officers in one or more of the British military arms and, blessed with uncommon and therefore easily searchable names for the most part, it doesn't take too much detective work to quickly uncover further detail.

In the image that I have posted above, a quick search on my British Army Ancestors website shows, for instance, that M A (Maurice Astley) Knatchbull-Hugesson served as a second lieutenant with the Grenadier Guards and was KiA in 1916, whilst C W (Cyril Walter) Holcroft served as a captain with the Worcestershire Regiment and was later awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). The archive has been indexed and OCRd as appropriate and will be an invaluable resource, and a free one at that. Well done to Radley College for taking the decision to digitise its archive.

The Territorial Year Book 1909 & 1910

Some years ago I bought the Territorial Year Book, published in 1909. The Territorial Force, of course, came into being in April 1908, and the year book, published the following year, ran to nearly 300 pages and chronicled the birth of the new Force and published details of those were running the county associations and details about the various Territorial Force units. As a reference work of the Territorial Force at that particular time, it is unmatched. The book is also uncommon and I think I bought mine from a bookseller in Australia or the US, I can't quite remember now. I subsequently had the book re-bound in green cloth (to match the original green soft cover wraps) and it sits within arm's reach on one of my bookshelves.

This week I was fortunate enough to pick up the volume for 1910 which has 100 fewer pages than its predecessor but which nevertheless follows the same format and gives useful information about the TF in that year. In due course I may digitise both volumes which will undoubtedly increase their usefulness.

The image above is from the 1910 volume and shows the type of information recorded. This is also a rare opportunity to see part of my left thumb.

MoD references on medal index cards

I've been meaning to write this blog post for a while. What follows may not be rocket science but because the information scrawled on medal index cards is important, I thought I'd draw attention to two of the particular annotations here.

The medal index card above is 'busy'; lots of information here concerning the regiments that James Murray served with, his medal entitlement, the award of his MM which was gazetted on the 19th November 1917, and the re-issue of these campaign medals in 1934. What I want to draw attention to though is the dates that appear in the remarks section. There are two dates here: 24/1/64 and 14/12/53. These are the dates on which an enquiry about this man's service was received by the MoD at its Hayes office in Middlesex. I don't have any background on the 1953 enquiry but I do have a copy of the response that was returned in 1964. Here it is:

This particular response was returned on the 5th February 1964, quite a quick turnaround considering the enquiry had only been received on the 24th January 1964.

And so the first point to note is that the dates expressed thus, are the dates on which the enquiry was received by the Ministry of Defence (MoD):

The second point to note, ruefully, is that in 1964 this man's records were still extant. The information about his enlistment, transfer and discharge can only have come from an attestation paper (or similar document), whereas the entitlement to medals could conceivably have come from medal rolls. At some point after 1964 therefore, the MoD finished what the Luftwaffe had started in 1940 and destroyed James Murray's records.

1st Cadet Battalion, The Essex Regiment

I came across this headed paper this morning whilst researching a soldier who had served in this cadet battalion. I was not aware of this particular battalion, although the detailed headed paper itself makes its affiliation quite clear.

Headquartered in Canning Town, the "London-over-the-border" stipulation was obviously quite lenient. Chelmsford (home of the battalion's bank) is 34 miles from Canning Town and would have seemed like the back of beyond in the early 1900s. Ingatestone is only marginally closer at about 29 miles.

The 6th Battalion, Essex Regiment was headquartered at West Ham, with A to G companies drawing recruits from West Ham, and H company drawing men from Prittlewell. There was a drill station at Grays. The man who is referred to on this paper is George Ryan who would later serve in the Royal West Kent Regiment and die as a prisoner of war in January 1917 just three days after his 18th birthday. You can see a photo of George on my British Army Ancestors website.

British Army Ancestors - 17th Lancers identified

About a year ago I launched British Army Ancestors, my initiative to provide a vehicle for people to upload army photographs and so, in time, build a useful free resource for others. This week I've been adding my own discoveries and I want to use this post to talk about two of these.

Under the caption, " A dismounted Lancer at a skirmishing display" this photograph first appeared in the The Navy & Army Illustrated that was published on the 6th March 1896.  The article notes "Here we have a picture which will serve to remind many of our readers of the Military Displays at the Agricultural Hall, and to others will explain the kind of fighting which Dr Jameson's troopers made with the Boers at Krugerdorp. It is a pretty idea, teaching a cavalry horse to lie down and serve as a living screen, from behind which his rider can fire in safety, and moreover, has its use in warfare. In the present instance the dismounted horseman (Rough-rider Corporal Long, of the 17th Lancers) is one of a line of skirmishers ordered to use their carbines on foot, against an enemy whom they are unable to get at owing to the nature of intervening obstacles."

The Corporal Long in question can only be 3000 Cpl Henry Long who joined the regiment in December 1885, transferring to the 16th Lancers in November 1905. He was discharged in December 1906 having served 21 years and was entitled to the QSA and KSA for service in South Africa, as well as the Long Service & Good Conduct Medal with gratuity. His character on discharge was recorded as "Exemplary". 

The second photo is actually quite well-known and was subsequently rendered as artwortk for a cigarette card (see below). This photo originally appeared in The Navy & Army Illustrated which was published on the 21st February 1896. The caption underneath the photo ran,

"Her mother was shot in Cashmere, eight years ago, by Prince Adolphus of Teck, who brought the cub to Lucknow, where the regiment was stationed, and gave her as a present to his troop. Shortly after this the cub was lost for a year. Then one day a man came round with a performing bear, which was recognized as " Lizzie " Since then "Lizzie" has remained with the 17th, with whom she came to England in 1889. She is a great pet with all ranks, for her own part reciprocating the affection, specially in favour of Corporal Baker, her particular guardian, who is shown in the illustration..."

I looked at medal rolls and service records for 17th Lancers corporals called Baker and the only possible candidate is 2881 Shoeing Smith Cpl Thomas Baker. In this photo, the clincher is the horseshoe, just visible on his right arm which marks him out as a shoeing smith. His service record confirms that he held that rank between July 1894 and February 1896 when he was promoted to sergeant farrier.

I am delighted to have identified these two men but was only able to do so as a result of understanding the regimental numbers for the 17th Lancers and, fortuitously in both cases, finding surviving records for them in WO 97.

If you've not already done so, do check out British Army Ancestors. The site is free and even if you don't want to upload photos, you can quickly and easily search over 12m records.

Measuring success in 1917

I've just completed a research project and was struck by the following passage in the battalion diary which covers the actions during which my research subject was killed.

"Z Day, The Raid. A most successful undertaking... Casualties: Captain J E Day (died of wounds), Lieutenant Williams (wounded), 2nd Lt R E W Burke (wounded), 6 killed, 7 missing, 66 wounded. Whole battalion greatly elated at our success..."

Thus was success measured in April 1917. The extract is from the war diary of the 6th Royal Irish Regiment on the 5th April 1917 and I've manipulated the information somewhat because after "successful undertaking" the diarist had written, "21 prisoners of the 4th Grenadier Regiment, from whom inestimable information was gained."

We must take the diarist at his words and hope that it was of some comfort to the relatives of those who died that day. My research subject was one of the seven men missing. His body was never found and he is commemorated by name on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres.

The image comes from the Vimy Foundation website and shows Canadian soldiers from the 78th (Winnipeg Grenadiers) surrounding a rather forlorn looking German captured during a trench raid.

Life in the British Army in 1899 - the Fizzer Man

This article, written by Callum Beg, appeared in the Navy & Army Illsrrated published on the 17th June 1899

The soldier of past ages was content to invest what little surplus money remained to him, after paying for his regimental and other necessaries, in tobacco and ale. Not so the youthful warrior of today. Frequently fresh from school when he takes service under the Union Jack, it is not a matter for surprise that he has no appetite for either the one or the other. From time to time one hears of the prevalence of the “liquor habit” in the ranks and its dire results- crime and disease. Now it can not be denied that an abnormal love for “the flowing bowl” has been the ruin of many a promising soldier. It is equally true that no small proportion of our modern soldiers, although displaying no tendency to indulge in alcoholic liquors, is busy sowing the seeds of future disease connected  for the most part with the digestive organs.

Lest either the Army reformer or the agitator against armament of every description should for one moment suppose that the Government rations are responsible for the cultivation of dyspepsia among the defenders of the Empire, it may be well to clear the character of the “regulation” bread and meat before proceeding further. Let it be understood, then, that the provisions supplied free to the soldier are in no sense calculated to injure his "internal economy". On the contrary, were he to satiate his appetite with the rations provided for him, he would in all likelihood develop into a useful fighting man. Nowadays, however, he too often prefers to fill the "aching void" with a mixture of jam-tarts, cakes, and "fizzers".  A fizzer, as its name implies, is strictly speaking, a drink of an effervescent nature, but the term is in reality applied indifferently to almost every kind of temperance drink.

The demand for this species of liquor has within recent years become so great that it has provided a number of persons in the vicinity of every garrison town with a visible (and sometimes exceedingly lucrative) means of subsistence. Needless to say, the camp followers referred to are made up, like every other trade and calling, of honest men and rogues, although the latter, when discovered, are very quickly deprived of "Tommy’s" patronage. A few years ago, when the Fusilier Brigade - the old 5th (now Northumberland) Fusiliers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, and the Inniskilling Fusiliers - marched

out of Shorncliffe Camp on its way to Ashdown Forest for manoeuvres, it was closely followed by a veritable host of what those who had "soldiered" in the East were pleased to term "fizzer-wallahs" of varying degrees of respectability. Some, sufficiently well endowed with this world’s goods, carried their wares in carts or wheelbarrows. Others in groups of two or three were, perforce, charged with the conveyance of the ingredients necessary for the carrying on of their trade.

All that is required to manufacture the fizzer proper is aqua pura and a proportionate amount of sherbet. During the first few miles of the first day’s march it may be assumed that the former commodity was to be had in abundance, but the thirsty young soldiers, unaccustomed to self-control, had soon exhausted the water supply of the smaller dealers. The capitalists who had a sufficient supply of Adam’s wine on their carts were overjoyed to see their trade suddenly increased; but those who lacked transport were not wanting in resources. The Hythe Canal lay along the route, and ere long the cans of the "small fry" were again filled - but with what? A greenish stagnant fluid rich in bacilli.

Regardless of this fact, the younger men of the brigade continued to drink; but before "lights out" had sounded in camp that night there was "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth" not to mention work in plenty for the Army Medical Staff.

"It’s an ill-wind that blows nobody any good." So said the wiser "fizzer-wallahs" the following day; for the mandate went forth that soldiers were to purchase their refreshments from none but those provided with passes. Needless to say, the vendors of bacteria were "unprovided with a pass" and wended their way homewards, sadder and wiser men. In barracks and camps such as Aldershot strict rules obtain regarding hawkers and their wares. None can follow their calling within the hallowed precincts of Government property without the necessary pass, and before permission is granted a strict investigation is made into the character of the applicant.

Generally speaking, the privileged dealers are either pensioners or soldiers’ widows. The discovery of any illegal practice on their part leads to the immediate loss of licence, but unfortunately there is no regulation by which the authorities can control the appetite of growing lads who are accustomed to leave all their pocket-money with these denizens of barracks.

Militia training in 1899

The following extract - and the illustration above -  are taken from an article published in the Navy & Army Illustrated on the 17th June 1899:

"To commence with, the Militia, when disembodied, as has been the case since Crimean days, is liable to be called out for training every year for any number of days not exceeding fifty-six, the normal period being arranged for the various arms as follows: artillery, infantry and medical staff corps twenty-seven days, engineers forty-one, and submarine miners fifty-five. 

"The force is of a strictly territorial character, and a recruit on enlisting, which comprises a term of service lasting six years, is at once posted to the unit that includes his place of residence within its scope; that is to say, a man cannot join any corps he likes, unless he "fakes” his residential qualification accordingly. But this system does not apply to the officering of the force, though the appointment of subaltern officers to the same is still based on the old-fashioned method which gives the Lord-Lieutenant of the county the first offer of recommending the name of a gentleman for submission to Her Majesty. Such candidates must be not less than seventeen years of age, nor under 5-ft 4-in in height and 33-in. in chest measurement. But if this opportunity be not taken within thirty days after the Secretary of State has notified the Lord-Lieutenant of the vacancy, the power of the latter in this respect lapses, and is then transferred to the officer commanding the unit. As a matter of fact, Lord-Lieutenants nominate but very few; and owing to the lack of suitable candidates in some parts of the country, a kind of Militia exchange, or register of officers willing to do duty with foreign battalions, has had to be instituted. 

"The connection between the Lord-Lieutenant and the county regiment of Militia is, indeed, a relic of Constitutional feudalism; and this magnate, when taking up his residence near the place of training, can claim to be provided with a Militia guard of honour, while his presence on the parade ground entitles him to the salute before the territorial Military authorities."

The Militia - enlistment, discharge and re-enlistment

The militia was regarded by many as a training ground for the regular army but without the full-time commitment demanded of a career soldier. As usual, the Army Book for The British Empire, published in 1893, contains some very useful information on enlistment into the militia, discharge from it, and re-enlistment.

Supply of men (a) Recruits

The recruit is enlisted for six years, and for the county in which he is raised. A militiaman, if under the age of 45, may engage for a further period of four years and may be re-enlisted for a period of four years up to the age of 45. He may not be transferred to the militia of another territorial regiment without his consent, but an infantry militiaman may be removed, if required, to any other battalion of the territorial regiment to which he belongs.

(b) Discharges

On termination of engagement by purchase, on conviction of felony, and as invalids, the discharge of militiamen may be carried out by officers commanding a militia unit without reference to higher authority. Discharges for misconduct (other than felony) must be referred to the general officer commanding the district.

(c) Enlistment into other Forces

If a militiaman wishes to enlist in the army or navy during the period of his training, he obtains from his commanding officer a "conditional discharge" pending his being released from his engagement. When not up for training or drill, a militiaman wishing to enlist into the army or navy can be attested at once.

A recruit enlisted for a militia unit receives no bounty on enlistment, but receives a bounty varying from £1 to £1 10 shillings on dismissal to his home from recruit drill, preliminary drill and training, under certain rules which are laid down. A militiaman receives an annual bounty of £1 on the expiration of his annual training, under certain restrictions. Every sergeant of militia who has joined on discharge from the army as a non-commissioned officer receives an annual bounty of £3 on the expiration of each training intended to stimulate non-commissioned officers of the regular forces to join the militia as sergeants.

Every militiaman on re-engagement receives a bounty of £1 10 shillings and an annual bounty of £1 10 shillings on expiration of training. Men who enlist for the militia after discharge from the regular army, army reserve, navy or marines receive a bounty of £1 10 shillings. A militiaman enlisted or re-enlisted for the militia reserve receives a bounty of £1 in advance for each year of service in the militia. A militiaman who, when up for drill on enlistment, preliminary drill or training, enlists into the regular army, receives a bounty of £1.

National Library of Scotland - military resources

Have I mentioned lately what an extremely useful resource for military historians, the National Library of Scotland has become?

For a start, the material has been digitised to a high quality specification from original material held at the National Library. The image above is taken from Hart's Annual Army List for 1913 and there are many such volumes which can be easily accessed. Here' a list of Army Lists from 1839 to 1915, and clicking on any of the links on this page opens up further links. There are also separate sections for the Royal Navy 1913-1940 and the Royal Air Force 1919-1945.

The National Library of Scotland's War section can be accessed by clicking on the link. This then opens up a number of different categories of which the Army Lists (noted above), Rolls of Honour and military maps are arguably the most interesting.  The military maps include First World War trench maps 1915-1918 and maps of Belgium from the Second World War.

Best of all is that this is a free resource, digitised by the National Library of Scotland and made freely available to a worldwide audience.

Clothing the British Army in 1899

The following extracts, and illustration, were first published in the Navy & Army Illustrated on the 28th January 1899.

"Every material used in clothing our soldiers is of the very best quality. It has often been remarked that a deserter never has any difficulty in exchanging his boots, shirt, and other articles of clothing that are not actually distinctive parts of his uniform, the reason being that they are of so much better quality than those he gets in return. The greatest care is taken in the selection of material, and endless pains are bestowed upon the making of the garments. Vast quantities of foot and head gear are bought ready-made, £233,000 a year being paid for boots and leggings, £50,000 for head gear, and £27,000 for other articles bought ready-made. But by far the greater part of the “goodly garb” a British soldier wears “ starts into shape and being” from the shears in the Royal Army Clothing Department at Pimlico. From this unpretentious-looking block of buildings every yard of cloth used in the British Army is issued.

"The buildings cover more than seven acres of ground, and consist of four solid sections, three being given over to packing and storing materials and made-up garments, and the other being divided into the inspection department and the factory where the garments are made. Once a year tenders are issued for the supply of fresh materials, and contractors come to the Clothing Department to examine the patterns of stuffs required. The pattern-room is a large apartment, where a sample of every article of dress and toilet used by a British soldier is kept. All goods sent in by contractors are tested carefully, to see that they are in every detail according to the sample. For instance, the cloth sent in is stretched until it breaks, the breaking strain in pounds being registered on a dial. The dye is also subjected to a test, a sample of the cloth being boiled three or four times over, to see whether the colour is according to contract. After these ordeals the cloth is passed over two horizontal rollers, and examined by experts who look for holes and flaws. Having passed this test satisfactorily, the cloth is folded, and every quarter of a yard is stamped with the Government broad arrow, and with the number of the person through whose hands it passes, who is responsible for the bale.

"The quantity of cloth and serge issued in a year amounts to 3,600,000-yds. Think what this means. If the cloth were laid down in the roadway it would more than reach from London to Manchester. The quantity of cotton material used in a year comes to about 1,500,000-yds. Of silk and thread it is calculated that 40,000 miles are drawn through the cloth in a year, which is practically 130 miles a day. The material used in the Royal Army Clothing Department costs £485,000 a year, and the annual wages of the Department average about £64,000."

The military moustache

The following article was published in the Navy & Army Illustrated on the 10th September 1898.

The moustache, which nowadays is almost as much an attribute of the military officer as the sword, was only begun to be worn in the Army at the beginning of the century. It first came into wear in the cavalry, on the introduction of Hussars as part of our military establishment. Foreign Hussars, from whom the dress and equipment of our Hussars were copied, wore moustaches, and the authorities directed by order that all ranks of our new Hussar regiments should follow their models. Ten years later, on Lancers being instituted in the British Army, similarly in imitation of the Lancer regiments of the Continent, particularly Napoleon’s Polish Lancers whom we met in the Peninsula, moustaches were ordered for our Lancers - the Continentals wearing moustaches - and after that our remaining Light Dragoon regiments, in due course, all adopted the moustache.

In the infantry the custom of wearing the moustache came in much later - not until the beginning of the Russian War. Our troops were at Varna, and after suffering considerably from cholera, were preparing for  the invasion of the Crimea, when on July 31, 1854, Lord Hardinge, the Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards, issued the following Army memorandum: “A large part of the Army being employed in Turkey, where it has been found beneficial to keep the upper lip unshaven and allow the moustache to grow, the general commanding-in-chief is pleased to authorise that practice in the Army generally.” The permission was, however, limited by a proviso which required “a clear space of two inches between the corner of the mouth and the whiskers (if any), the chin and under lip, and two inches of the throat to be kept shaven.” Whiskers went after 1870, and nowadays the moustache has come under the Queen’s Regulations for all branches of the Service. So much so indeed that only a year ago the authorities at the Horse Guards learned with indignation that young officers in certain regiments did not sufficiently cultivate the growth of moustaches by omitting to shave the upper lip, in consequence of which general officers commanding have now instructions to suppress such irregularities by any means that they  "may think necessary.”

The photograph on this post is taken from the Sherwood Foresters Regimental Annual for 1909 and shows Lt-Colonel Owen Cadogan Wolley Dod DSO (1863-1942) who, as well as commanding the 1st Battalion, also sported some terrific whiskers.

M2/156830 A-Sgt Fred Harwood, Army Service Corps

How can I find a photograph of my British Army Ancestor? It's a question I get asked a lot, and something I have been putting my mind to of late. Watch this space for further developments on this topic.

In the meantime though, here's a photograph of M2/156830 Private Fred Harwood of the Army Service Corps who, according to text scribbled on the reverse of the photo, served with 603 Company, Mechanical Transport, Army Service Corps in Floriana, Malta.

He certainly served overseas during the First World War and by the time he was issued with the British War Medal (his only entitlement) he was a corporal and acting sergeant. This photograph pre-dates that time, when Fred was a private, proudly standing by his lorry, presumably somewhere in the UK. 

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is related to Fred Harwood, and so would the current custodian of this photograph.

Military Tribunals 1916-1918

Here's a link to proceedings from  military tribunals 1916-1918 which are published on Findmypast. I think these are fascinating and I'd' love to see more of them.  Surviving books are few and far between because they were supposed to be destroyed.  Thankfully there were those who disregarded the instruction.

Findmypast has published records for Northamptonshire (transcriptions only), Surrey and Poplar; over twenty-eight thousand records in total, although some names appear many times, the result of multiple appeals either by the man or by the employer on behalf of a man.

Typical information contained in the registers includes:

Applicant's name and occupation
Applicant's address
Applicant's age
Employer's name and business
Employer's address
Nature and grounds of application
Whether application made by the man or the employer
Date of appeal
Date and time of appearance
Outcome of the appeal

So as you can see, there's a lot of infromation there. For men whose applications were refused, cross-check their names on military records such as First World War medal index cards, First World War campaign medal rolls and of course First World War service and pension records (all 4.3m of them).

Identifying the Guards

I picked up a copy of Anthony Edgeworth's The Guards yesterday and, looking at the photos, was reminded of an easy way to identify a particular regiment of Foot Guards. Simply look at the arrangement of the buttons on their tunics.

In terms of regimental precedence, the Grenadier Guards come first, followed by the Coldstream Guards, the Scots Guards,  the Irish Guards and finally, the Welsh Guards.

1. The Grenadier Guards - 1st - buttons arranged singly:

2. The Coldstream Guards - 2nd - buttons arranged in pairs:

3. The Scots Guards - 3rd - buttons arranged in groups of three:

4. The Irish Guards - 4th - buttons arranged in groups of four:

5. The Welsh Guards - 5th - buttons arranged in groups of five:

Easy when you know how.

The black and white photograph is courtesy of art.co.uk and then, in order of regimental precedence, The Daily Mail, Artangel, London SE1 and BBC News.

Victorian service in WO 363 and WO 364

It's a common misconception that WO 363 and WO 364 are the sole preserve of service and pension records respectively for First World War servicemen. They're not. There are thousands of pre-WW1 service records and Victorian Army service records to be found here and whilst some of the men may have still played some role during 1914-1918, or at least volunteered for service during the Great War, many did not.

Take one of my medal group men, Colour-Sergeant Charles Smith of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, for instance. I've written Charles on my British Army Medals blog. He appears in a photo of D Company's football team after they'd won the Company Challenge Shield in 1895/1896. I first looked for him in the British Army Service Records 1760-1915 collection on Find My Past. There was nothing there. So I had a look over on Ancestry lo and behold, there he was, nine pages in the WO 364 Pension Records. I keyed in his number and as if by magic he appeared. There would have been no point searching on Shropshire for the regiment because Charles joined up in 1879, prior to the existence of the KSLI. Instead, he's indexed as belonging to the 53rd Regiment of Foot. Charles was discharged in 1908, six years before the the First World War began, but having served nearly 30 years in the Army.

And what about the man whose attestation paper I've used to illustrate this post? This particular document dates to 1850 and is the earliest attestation I've come across so far in the WO 364 Pension Records. This man would have been 82 years old in 1914!

So don't rule out the so-called First World War records just because your man had been discharged from the Army before then. There are plenty of Victorian British Army ancestors to be found in WO 363 and WO 364.