CWGC – Individuals without Address Data

[Bart150]

The CWGC site gives address data for most individuals, but for a great many it does not.

Question: Is there any reason to think that the set of men without data differs in any significant way from the set of those with data?

For example: Suppose that for a certain battalion of a county regiment the CWGC site gives address data for exactly 50% of the men. Of the 50% with address data, 80% have addresses within the county and 20% come from outside the county. Can I reasonably assume, in the absence of any other information, that this 80-20 split probably applies to the whole battalion? Or is there some general characteristic of cases without address data that makes such an assumption unsafe?

[ss002d6252]

Question: Is there any reason to think that the set of men without data differs in any significant way from the set of those with data?

I believe it was part of the extra information provided by relatives.

SDGW would be a help for you as it gives an idea of birth place and place of enlistment.

Craig

[John_Hartley]

It is a simple matter that the next of kin did not return the Final Verification Form in the case of those men with no additional information recorded. As such, it may or may not be reasonable to extrapolate the known data to the whole of the battalion's deaths.

A search on Soldiers Died in the Great War may be worthwhile to see what results there are on place of residence.

[Petroc]

Bart,

I don't think that the 80/20 county supposition would necessarily apply to any British battalion, both before the Great War, during it and afterwards, not that this affected county/regional regimental affiliations and loyalties

[Bart150]

It is a simple matter that the next of kin did not return the Final Verification Form in the case of those men with no additional information recorded.

Why should anybody bother to return the Final Verification Form? A widow, for example, might reason: Well, they already know my name and address; otherwise they couldn’t have sent me the Final Verification Form to fill in. There seems no point in filling in the form with the name and address that they already know.

Or were the next of kin given some tangible reason why it was in their interest to fill in the form?

[nigelcave]

Bart,

I don't think that the 80/20 county supposition would necessarily apply to any British battalion, both before the Great War, during it and afterwards, not that this affected county/regional regimental affiliations and loyalties

Especially when one considers amalgamations and disbandments (the latter chiefly in the early months of 1918, with the reconfiguration of divisions and the three battalion brigade). Rebadging at that time made little allowance for county (and occasionally even national - ie Scots/Welsh/Irish/English) affliations.

[CGM]

Why should anybody bother to return the Final Verification Form? ..............

A copy of the Final Verification Form can be seen HERE.

CGM

[Bart150]

That’s illuminating, CGM, thank you. But now I’m pretty puzzled.

The system, as I understand it, was as follows:

For the great majority of cases the IWGC had a reliable next-of-kin address. It also had basic data such as name, unit etc.

The IWGC sent the next of kin a so-called Final Verification Form containing the basic data, and the next of kin could return the form to the IWGC. The next of kin might return the form for any of these reasons: 1, to correct the basic data (eg ‘Davis’ not ‘Davies’); 2, to supply one piece of extra data for the stone: age; 3, to give the desired inscription for the stone (eg ‘now at peace’); 4, to request that there should be no cross on the stone. (Of course, reasons 2-4 could never apply to a man named on a memorial as opposed to buried in a cemetery.)

If none of these reasons applied, there was no need for the next of kin to return the form. The form makes that quite clear.

The CWGC site gives address data for most individuals, but for a great many (certainly several hundred thousand) it does not. John Hartley (message #3) says (if I understand correctly) that the cases with address data are those where the Final Verification Form was returned by next of kin and those without address data are those where the form was not returned. If that were so it would mean, for example:

- Soldier A’s widow sees that the basic data are right and is happy with a cross on the stone, but she’d like the age to be recorded. Therefore she returns the form.

- Soldier B’s widow sees that the basic data are right and is happy with a cross, but doesn’t care about the age being recorded, and doesn’t want a special inscription. Therefore she does not return the form.

- Consequently Soldier A’s address data is now in the CWGC database and Soldier B’s address data is not.

I can’t see any sense in that. Surely the presence or absence of the address data must be explained by some other factors than return of that form.

[roughdiamond]

For the great majority of cases the IWGC had a reliable next-of-kin address.

Bart

Not really an accurate statement, what they had was NOK details from Service records, in some cases for men who'd died 7 years earlier.

It's the reason many MIC's are marked that Medals were "Returned", NOK Died and Widows re-married and moved away, in both cases Pensions stopped, if in fact the IWGC even had any contact with the Pensions Dept, throw into that undeclared Alias' and you've got the basis for a lot of blanks against "Further Information" on the CWGC entries.

Sam

[Bart150]

Sam

What you imply (I think, but maybe I misunderstand you) is that if the IWGC didn't receive a returned form, they assumed that their NOK data was unreliable. If the IWGC did that, that would have been crazy. Their form made it clear that the NOK didn't need to return it unless the reasons I mentioned above applied. The form did NOTsay: Unless you return this we will assume that our NOK data is unreliable.

Also, there are several hundreds of thousands of men out of the one million or so WW1 cases in the CWGC database without address information. Was the number of men without a traceable NOK really of that order?

Bart

[roughdiamond]

Bart

You read far too much into my post. I'm pointing out that address' for many NOK would be wrong for the reasons I stated.

As to whether non returns meant no entry in "additional information", the only people who can answer that are the CWGC, but ask yourself this, if the IWGC automatically added the NOK details to their entries if there was no return, why doesn't every entry have a NOK? After all, in almost every case the Soldier would give the name and address of one on his Service record.

Merely an observation rather than a statement of fact, for that, as I said, contact the CWGC.

Sam

[kenf48]

- Consequently Soldier A’s address data is now in the CWGC database and Soldier B’s address data is not.

For the sake of accuracy, I don't recall ever seeing a soldier's address, only that of his next of kin, being recorded on the CWGC RoH.

Details of the next of kin were on the Final Verification Form which is considered on the CWGC faq http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty-details/frequently-asked-questions.aspx especially relevant being 'additional information provided by the next of kin', including 'age and details of the next of kin'. As 99% were destroyed it seems impossible to determine how many were returned.

As for your Pareto analysis I think that would probably work pre-1916, especially with locally raised battalions, but I doubt it would be as robust post conscription.

Ken

[Bart150]

@ kenf48 and others

For example: Suppose that ...... 80% have addresses within the county and 20% come from outside the county.

I did say 'For example: Suppose ....'

It was just an example to illustrate the problem. Any other two numbers adding up to 100 would have done just as well.

I wasn't making any kind of factual assertion.

[KevinBattle]

Bart

What you imply (I think, but maybe I misunderstand you) is that if the IWGC didn't receive a returned form, they assumed that their NOK data was unreliable.

I think you may have misunderstood. The inference would be that the information was reliable, as they had nothing else to use!

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

The FVF clearly request the return of the entire Form within 6 weeks otherwise the headstone will be marked with the information the IWGC had inserted on the Form.

If there was a clear mistake, then there would be an incentive to return the Form, but their must be many instances of families who were not able to read or write to a great degree who may have assumed that the information was correct.

As regards age, well, there seem to be many instances when the soldier was not entirely truthful about his age, so the family would best know that.

Those that didn't return the Forms are those with the truncated entries on the CWGC database, neither age nor Additional Information being shown.

There's a partial clue in it being the FINAL verification of the information.

So, the answer to your question in your initial post is "Yes, there IS a difference". Those with Additional Information details are those where the family responded to the FVF; those without are those whose families did not respond, for any number of reasons not now known to us 100 years on.

[Bart150]

The FVF clearly request the return of the entire Form within 6 weeks otherwise the headstone will be marked with the information the IWGC had inserted on the Form.

....

Those that didn't return the Forms are those with the truncated entries on the CWGC database, neither age nor Additional Information being shown.

...

Those with Additional Information details are those where the family responded to the FVF; those without are those whose families did not respond, for any number of reasons not now known to us 100 years on.

But in many cases the reason for not returning the form was quite simple. There was no reason to do so. For example, the name already on the form was correct and it was going to be inscribed on, say, the Thiepval memorial, and so the question of age or message didn't arise. The form makes clear that under those circumstances there was no point in returning the form.

[Terry_Reeves]

The question that has not been asked is where did IWGC get the NOK addresses in the first place? They can only of come from the Regimental Record Offices and if a soldier did not update a family change of address then there was an obvious problem. I say this in the light of the preparations for the 1918 general election, where great difficulty was created by not notifying the authorities of such changes which meant that placing men in the correct registration district became problematic. Similar problems must have occurred with Final Verifiictaion Forms.

Another cause it seems to me, is that some families simply had no interest in the process, perhaps preferring family commemorations.

TR

[rolt968]

But in many cases the reason for not returning the form was quite simple. There was no reason to do so. For example, the name already on the form was correct and it was going to be inscribed on, say, the Thiepval memorial, and so the question of age or message didn't arise. The form makes clear that under those circumstances there was no point in returning the form.

I have never actually counted, but it has always seemed to me that there were fewer NoK names and addresses where there was to be no gravestone. Which would tend to back this up.

On the topic of not being able to find NoK, I was a little surprised how far the WD went in at least one case. When attempting to make contact at the address to which they had sent a soldier's effects after his death early in the war it was found that the house had burned down in tragic circumstances. The authorities then contacted the local police who eventually found the family and the medals were sent on. The NoK are in the CWGC database and there is an individual inscription.

Perhaps some of the points in this discussion are relevant?

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=217967&hl=

R

(Edit: This post "crossed" TR's.)

[KW/592]

Another point to consider for instance in my own connection is that the soldiers NOK mother could not read or write and died in 1923 aged 72. His medals were also never issued.

[Derek Black]

Does anyone know the percentage of British Casualties without any N.o.K. info on CWGC?

[EDIT]

Ages are easier to identify than n.o.k. info on CWGC.

Did some quick sums and see from 830921 British casualties 352290 have no age on CWGC, leaving 478631 with ages.

So approximately 42.5% of the British War casualties on CWGC have no age info, perhaps a not too dissimilar number of men also have no n.o.k info?

[Bart150]

Derek

I did a sampling exercise on a couple of battalions and found the percentage without address data to be more than 40 and less than 50 per cent.

That corresponds well to the impression I have formed from looking less rigorously at other cases.

BTW. How did you manage to do a quick study of 80,000 casualties? Is there some database facility I don't know about?

Bart

[nigelcave]

Note that it is 830921 (ie eight hundred and thirty housand nine hundred and twenty one) - which I assume is the total number of British dead in the war as registered by the CWGC.

[Derek Black]

Yes Nigel that's right. I set CWGC for WW1 only, and ticked the "U.K. forces" box to get 830921.

Bart, nothing other than the CWGC search was used. There are 55,295 pages of 15 casualties each.

I ordered them by age, then split the difference in page numbers in 10 thousands, then thousands and so on til i reached the point where i found where those with ages/no ages met, and did the maths.

No unneccesary clicking of "next" required if you manually type in the number in the address bar, see below.

[Bart150]

Aha, Derek, quite neat. I get it now, after a bit of cursing that the cwgc site doesn't make that sort feature more prominent.

Another thing I noticed, although it's not relevant to the subject of this thread.

You CAN'T search on Age but you CAN sort results on Age

You CAN search on Honours, but you CAN'T sort results on Honours - or even see that data on the results screen.

Ditto for the War field.

Seems a bit inconsistent.

[Tom Lang]

Derek,

You have to take account of amendments that have been made.

My grandfather's CWGC record had no full first name, no age or NOK.

I was able (after a prolonged process) to produce evidence (a Pension Index Record Card obtained from the WFA was the final document) that was acceptable to the CWGC to amend their records.

So my grandfather's record was originally in those without the info, but since last year is now included in your stats of those who do.

I suppose that only the CWGC can provide such details as to the number of amendments they have made to their records.

Kindest Records,

Tom.

[KevinBattle]

You CAN search the CWGC database by age....

You just need to use Geoffs Search Engine!