Disrespectful and addicted to drink

The man pictured above is Richard Jackson, born in Burslem around 1843 and admitted to Aylesbury Gaol on the 30th October 1873 to serve a sentence of 21 days for stealing beans.  Richard was 30 years old and gave his trade as a boot closer.  Five years prior service in the 104th Regiment of Foot is also noted.

Richard's record from Aylesbury Gaol can be viewed here, in the Victorian Prisoners dataset maintained by Buckinghamshire County Council; another great (free) online resource.

I checked to see if Richard had a pension record in the WO 97 series published on findmypast.co.uk and he does.  He was discharged on the 14th October 1869 being found unfit for further service.  His conduct was recorded as "... bad, he is not in possession of any good conduct badges.  Has been guilty of disrespect to his superiors and has been addicted to drink."  Richard's name appeared six times in the regimental defaulters' book and he was imprisoned for seven days on two separate occasions.  Pthisis Pulmonalis (consumption, or TB) was the cause of Richard's discharge from the army and he certainly looks older than his 30 years in the photo.  Further notes on his 1869 discharge record, "Greatly emaciated and suffering from cough and the usual symptoms of phthisis. Disease has probably been aggravated by intemperance." A sad story and I have been unable to find him on the 1881 census.

Royal Cyphers on attestation papers

There is some great artwork on early attestation and discharge papers and here's an example from the discharge papers of 131 Private William Nelson of the 74th Regiment of Foot who left His Majesty's Army on the 31st July 1836 after 24 years and 129 days' service which included "7 years and 5 months in North America [and] one year and 8 months in the West Indies". He was discharged at his own request (and in apparently robust health) signing that:

"I perfectly understand , that in receiving my discharge at my own request, I entirely relinquish all Claim to Pension, and that, even if I should re-enlist, my past Services prior to the date of my present Discharge cannot be allowed to reckoned for the purpose of obtaining any benefit from Chelsea Hospital".

Little wonder that the army often struggled to recruit and was consistently below establishment (despite the relaxing of standards in height, weight and chest expansion) throughout the nineteenth century.  Still, the Royal cypher is excellent.

July 1915 attestation in WO 97

Here's an anomaly: a 1915 attestation within a pension series (WO 97) which supposedly ends in 1913.  David Marshall was 60 years old when he attested with the Rifle Brigade at Hereford on the 14th July 1915.  He had previously seen service with the Rifle Brigade and the 2nd Dorsetshire Regiment and gave his trade as General Labourer.  He was discharged after seven days.

Is this the latest attestation in WO 97?

Army Deserters 1828-1840

There are some great Army Deserter records over on findmypast; records that make a nice complement to the Chelsea Pensioner records in WO 97.

Thanks to the efforts of the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society, it's possible to view the details of over 34,000 men who deserted the British Army between 1828 and 1840. At an average of 2,615 desertions per annum over the thirteen years that the database covers, that seems like a lot of men. According to figures published in Alan Ramsay Skelley's The Victorian Army at Home (Croom Helm, London, 1977) however, those numbers are par for the course.  In 1862, 2,895 men deserted (1.4 per cent of the British Army as a whole) and over the next thirty-six years, the figure never dropped below that 1862 level and in fact rose as high as 5,861 in 1872; 3.2 per cent of the British Army.

There are plenty of service records in WO 97, and in fact in the WO 363 and WO 364 series for the First World War which show men having deserted.  Many of these men however, were recaptured or returned of their own free will and went on to lead distinguished careers.  I have noticed during my own research, that most soldiers who did desert, often did so within the first year (and sometimes even days or weeks) of joining.  As Skelley suggests, talking about the number of soldiers of the Home Army in prison:

"... younger soldiers were more prone to commit offences or at least were more likely to be caught for doing so, than older, more experienced men who by the time they had served six or seven years would have beome accustomed to the demands of military life, would have had the maturity to cope with the demands and might have achieved greater responsibility and greater freedom with promotion."

Deserters, when caught, could expect to be flogged or branded.  Although flogging was later restricted by the Mutiny Act of 1868 to active service and to certain offences committed while under sentence in military prisons, and later still (1881, the Army Discipline and Regulation Act) restricted to military prisons only, it wasn't until 1906 that corporal punishment in military prisons was abolished altogether.

The image below, taken from the Army Deserters 1828-40 data on findmypast shows you the type of information you can expect to find.  The image at the top of this post dates to 1884 and shows a deserter having been apprehended.

Wildcard military search on Findmypast and Ancestry

I must have searched tens of thousands of military records online and so I write this post with some degree of authority.

I should say at the outset that I find both sites to be a fantastic resource. For the First World War enthusiast, Ancestry has the service records in WO 363, the pension records in WO 364 and the WW1 medal index cards. That's pretty much a full set of WW1 records for other ranks and is an invaluable research tool. Ancestry also has the UK Military Campaign Medal and Award Rolls 1793-1949 AND the UK Naval Medal and Award Rolls 1793-1972. Given such an extensive catalogue, it almost seems churlish to mention that the two medal roll collections DO NOT include the rolls for WW1 and WW2.

For its part, findmypast.co.uk has the WO 97 Chelsea Pensioner records 1760-1913 and the militia records in WO 96 between 1760 and 1915. That latter end date should be treated with a degree of caution as I've yet to find a militia record for 1915, and in fact by 1915 the milita had been long dead, replaced by the Special Reserve in 1908. Nevertheless, these record sets are extremely valuable and complement the records on Ancestry very nicely. Findmypast has more related military records coming up soon and one presumes they'll be of the same high quality as those in WO 96 and WO 97.

So plenty there for the military historian and on both sites you can search across regiments without having to input the name of a soldier. Findmypast provides a handy drop-down list of regiments whilst on Ancestry you have to input the name of the regiment yourself. This can be handy, providing that your spelling is up to scratch, but it also means that if you type in "fusilier" in the regiment box, you'll get results for the Royal Fusiliers, Northumberland Fusiliers, Lancashire Fusiliers, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, etc.

However, the main search difference between the two sites is the wildcard facility on search. On findmypast, if you're looking for, let's say, a Coldstream Guardsman with the number beginning with 3, you simply have to type in 3* in the soldier number box. You can use the wildcard asterisk on any combination of numbers. So typing 35* would bring up numbers beginning 35; 356* would bring up numbers beginning 356, and so on. You can even type 3*7 which would bring up all those numbers beginning with 3 and ending with 7. The flexibility that this type of searching offers has to be a good thing.

For reasons known only to itself however, Ancestry does not allow wildcard searching on any number or letter search of less than, or more than, three numbers or letters. So if you knew that your Coldstream Guard ancestor's service number began with 3, typing in 3* would bring up page explaining why your search hasn't worked. That's a shame because it would appear that a simple change in the algorithm could give Ancestry searches the same flexibility that you get over on findmypast, and with many of the burnt documents in WO 363 displaying burnt or water-damaged numbers, we researchers need all the help we can get.

I'm not sure where the image comes from that I've used to illustrate this post but I'll be happy to acknowledge the source if the owner gets in touch.

More on WO 97

The screen above shows the search screen that users are presented with if they wish to search the British Army Service Records 1760-1913 on Find My Past.

Searching this category is NOT AVAILABLE as part of the trumpeted FREE Trial. So if you were hoping to have a fortnight's freebie (as I was) forget it.


At first glance there doesn't appear to be the facility to search by regiment. However, it is there, it's lurking behind the advanced search tab (above). Click on the regiment and you're presented with drop-down options. Some regiments though, are missing. Where, for instance is the South Yorkshire Regiment, the predecessor of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry?

I ran a search on men who'd joined the The Scots Guards in 1882. The results (below) are useful in that they show where the men were born - and therefore give some indication (for the most part) where men were recruited. However, the omission of the man's number is a serious flaw. I'm a number cruncher. I like army numbers - see my Army Service Numbers blog - and not being able to see these here makes it unlikely that I'll use the service.


Also, as far as value for money is concerned, Ancestry wins hands down. Find my Past will sell you a bundle of 60 credits for seven pounds. That will buy you access to a measly ten records or so. That's probably enough for an occasional researcher but a serious military historian is going to have to cough up 150 quid for a year's subscription (or ninety-five pounds for six months).

Nevertheless, WO 97 is a fantastic military resource, and a real feather in the FMP cap.

WO 97 on-line

Find My Past has just released the first batch of pension records from the WO 97 series at the National Archives. The series contains approximately 700,000 records of soldiers who were discharged to pension between 1760 and 1913 and is a major collection.

The first 250,000 records have been released and others are currently being scanned. Here are the details:

Date range

1883-1900: 270,334 records available now
1901-1913: 303,000 available by May 2010
1873-1882: 64,000 records available by June 2010
1855-1872: 65,000 records available by July 2010
1760-1854: 184,000 records available by April 2011

Also known as the Chelsea Pensioners' records, don't let the title confuse you. The pensions were administered through the Royal Hospital at Chelsea and the pensioners themselves were not necessarily in-pensioners at the Royal Hospital. Click on the link below to start searching the database.