16 March
Chelsea Pensioners' service records from 1883 to 1900 (Catalogue series WO 97) can now be found online at findmypast.co.uk.
Each individual soldier's record is at least four pages long and full of fascinating details that are invaluable to family and military historians.
As well as being some of the most detailed records available to family historians, the records include servicemen born in the UK and throughout the world, including many soldiers born in India and the Caribbean. The records list soldiers who either completed their full service in the army or who were wounded and pensioned out of the army. The records do not include those killed in action, army deserters or officers.
'Ordinary soldiers'
Debra Chatfield, Marketing Manager at findmypast.co.uk, said: 'Unlike many other military records, which often only provide information about Officer Class soldiers, these records are of "ordinary" soldiers. These fascinating, detailed records enable you to find out so much about your soldier ancestors, even including what they looked like, long before the invention of photography. The colour images of handwritten records provide amazing insights into the lives of our military ancestors.'
1883-1900
This first tranche of digitised records comprises approximately 285,000 records and 1.5 million images for the years 1883-1900. These service records are of soldiers who served in the British Army in receipt of a pension administered by The Royal Hospital Chelsea and were only previously viewable on microfilm and original form in the reading rooms at The National Archives. The remaining records for the whole of the WO 97 series, 1760-1913, will go online over the next 18 months, along with the records from WO 96.
William Spencer, Principal Specialist: Military, Maritime and Transport Records at The National Archives commented: 'The online publication of these soldiers' records serves two key purposes: to provide worldwide online access and to preserve, in a new way, some of the most popular, and thus the most heavily handled records in The National Archives.
'The detail in these extraordinary records will enable users to search for specific individuals or men who served in a specific regiment of the British Army - a task which has not been easy until now.'
Further research
For more information on researching your military ancestors, see our research signpost Looking for records of a British Army soldier up to 1913.
