POW Pay, how did it work?

[corisande]

I have come across a couple of service records of POWs, where they are electing to pay a sum, seems to be 9d a day, to a nominated person back home

Am I right in thinking that

1. A Private was getting one shilling a day at this time

2. They could elect to pay 9d to anyone they liked, but that they had to fill in the appropriate forms. It is amazing but letters are being exchanged between POW camps and British Army Record offices for the correct permissions to be given.

3. Did the men in the POW camps get money from UK, and was this limited to only part of their pay. In other words was only 3d a day ever paid to POWs and the rest was either accumulated in the Army at home, or paid to the nominated person

4. The nominated person, as far as I can tell, did not have to be a relative, nor a dependent, it could be anyone.

[Doug Johnson]

Corisande,

I am not sure how much a private was paid but money was sent out to PoWs in the form of money orders from relatives etc and not just from their pay. NB not all their pay had to be distributed, some or all of it could be left in their account but I am not sure of how any was transmitted to them i.e. whether the Army sent them money orders or whether is was sent out by their nominee. There were some restrictions on the amount they could spend in some camps (I read the amounts the other day but can't remember where at the moment but NCOs were allowed more than privates. It was also unclear as to whether this only covered spending within the camp i.e. spending outside the camp could have been extra) but as far as I can tell this was not universal and there there does not seem to have been any restriction on the amount that could be sent. Most camps operated a system where any money sent from the UK was converted and banked for the PoW. The PoW could then draw on these funds and receive camp vouchers for spending at the canteen. For any larger purchases from outside the camp the PoW probably never saw the money as it was paid directly from his fund e.g the PoW would go to the authorities and ask to buy say a trumpet. The authorities would tell him how much (or he may have agreed a sum with an outside supplier) and if he agreed to the amount it would be taken from his account and the authorities would then pay the dealer for the trumpet. PoWs were also paid by the German authorities for any work they did outside the camps. This was not deducted from their army pay but was treated as a bonus. Again this pay was usually banked and paid out in the form of vouchers. Officers however were slightly different in that they were paid by the Gerrman authorities. For junior officers this usually just covered their mess charges, charges which the other ranks did not receive. However officers usually had other means and the use of their cheque books is a significant story in itself.

At Güstrow, a handfull of letters began to arrive in November 1914 followed later by parcels and money orders. By March 1915 these were all being received regularly.

In the LG there are lists of deaths that include PoWs where the amount they had owing to them was stated and some of the sums can be substantial.

Doug

[corisande]

Doug

Thanks for that informative report :-)

I can see that there is more to the actual payment within the camps than I had realised but I am clear on that now

Leaves me with what the minutiae were on the payment to people back home. Problem seems to be that very little has been written about POWs. One gets the impression that regiments were a little ashamed of men the surrendered, and preferred not to mention them too much

[centurion]

I think you may be mistaken re "a little ashamed of men the surrendered, and preferred not to mention them too much". more likely they were faced with immediate and pressing problems and issues which got written about. There are quite a few books about POWs (usually written by themselves) plus letters home, camp newspapers, correspondence with the Red Cross and the protecting power, local newspaper articles, questions in the House etc etc. The problem is finding and accessing it. I have never seen any serious expression of shame except in some very specific (and rare) incidents.

Camp money (vouchers) were usually in Marks and some camp authorities applied a ruinous exchange rate. POWs were not allowed access to real money (German or British) as this might be used in an escape bid.

[Doug Johnson]

Corisande,

There was no difference to the way a PoW was treated to any other serving soldier as regards their pay. Whether they were overseas or a PoW, if they had dependents then they have some of their pay remitted to them. Accoring to Australian records I have just seen, a propotion was compulsory if they were married.

Not all camps used vouchers, some officers' camps used real money for most if not all the war (and most camps did at the beginning). They were restricted as to the amount they could hold at any one time and holding excess was punishable. It was possible to overcome this for bribes etc by drawing on the collective holdings of your friends.

It is also unclear as to how it worked with PoWs working say on farms. Some would be at these places for a considerable length of time, years even, and camp money was of no use as they were not near a camp. They would also be paid for their work and this must have been in real money.

There is a book on camp money which I have not invested in, perhaps a study of it would reveal the extent of the use of camp money.

Doug

[corisande]

Doug

Thanks, it becomes quite a specialist subject

I assume that as it was their own money, then they could ask the army to pay it to anyone of their own choosing

Am I right in thinking that if it was not paid to anyone, that the POW could only receive up to a certain amount, and that the rest went into the equivalent of a bank account.

My curiosity was really to be sure that they could ask for payment to a non relative. I have an example on a man's service record of a payment to the father of another prisoner, and there is absolutely no relationship (I have corresponded with a relative of the father, and I have substantial amount of data and there is no relationship, and indeed they could never have met before the war)

[Doug Johnson]

Corisande,

I would have thought that they could pay it to anyone, after all they may be a widower and may need to pay someone to look after their children. I have no idea whether thay could elect to pay more than one person though I don't see why not (a divorcee may need to pay maintenance AND pay his new wife).

As with any other soldier it was not necessary to draw all your pay, after all if you are in the bush in Africa what are you going to do with it? I would also suggest that some would not be able to draw pay even if they wanted as it was not available. If you were planning an expedition into the bush for say 2-3 months would you expect to carry enough pay for your troops for the whole of the period?

Doug

[corisande]

I guess POW pay is a whole area that I never really had to think about before in depth.

When I found 3 different POWs involved in correspondence with the regiment's pay office back in the UK, in order to sign letters to arrange payment to someone back in the UK, my first though was that they must be a relative. Then when I came across proof that they could not even have know the payee, I wondered what the rules were.

If they could indeed arrange payments to anyone, then I do not have to spend ages trying to find a family link, where I am virtually certain no family link exists (if you follow the convoluted logic of this)

[Doug Johnson]

Corisande,

It may be that the man in question was paying someone else in order to enable him to send him parcels. The Government and Red Cross actually sent little (though they did send the bread), it was the relatives, friends and the aid societies that put up the money for most of the parcels.

Doug

[corisande]

t may be that the man in question was paying someone else in order to enable him to send him parcels.

That is a good point, and is probably the explanation. I have read of the work that the local committee did, but if a man, in this case came from Scotland and was in an Irish Regiment, and had no obvious relatives, then he needed to get someone to send him parcels.

So I can see that the obvious way would be to get a fellow prisoner to get their father to send him parcels too.

[wizard2250]

My Grandfather's pay voucher. He was a POW from 04-1917 to 12-1918.

shawn

[corisande]

Fascinating. You can obviously learn a lot by digging further into such a certificate if you are lucky enough to have one.

[wizard2250]

Corisande,

Unfortunately, I don't have his pay book and there is no mention of pay in his service record. All I have are his pension papers. I do know from another document that was with the certificate that he was in the Polishing class from March 1918 to November 1918. I really can't see him earning only eighteen francs, so I wonder if he didn't use some of the money, through the company mentioned, to have things sent to him?

Any insight would be welcome.

shawn

edit: He was also a batman in a winter camp....I wonder was this a paying? position or simply a matter of higher rank, in a POW situation, being able to pick someone to serve?. Sorry, I'm not sure if this is Army protocol or an internal (POW camp) thing.

[corisande]

As he was interned in Switzerland, rather than a POW in Germany, I assume a completely different set of rules apply. The sort of questions are

What were he conditions they were held under in Switzerland

He appears to have been at Vevey, what can you find out about the camp there in particular

Who were Brinsmead and Sons, Wigmore St, London

and so on

Probably worth trying a new thread with the paper and information you have, and see if you can pick up anything fresh.

The batman thing seems par for the course,. I know that two men had batmen with the Irish Brigade, viz Captain Monteith and Sgt-Major Keogh

[centurion]

Men interned in a neutral country were fed and housed by the government of that country - in the case of men exchanged from a belligerent country their national government was than billed for this. Where the internee had arrived directly in the neutral country (e.g by crash landing there, retreating across the frontier, shipwreck etc.) the neutral country bore the cost. (There were complaints from prisoners in the Netherlands that the home country was sometimes more parsimonious than the neutral country so that exchanged internees got fed worse than those who had been interned directly - the Australians were most vociferous about this).

British officers would have their pay paid into a UK bank that had a subsidiary, or an arrangement with a bank branch, in the neutral country. They could then use their check book to draw money.

[Doug Johnson]

Re Switzerland, I would recommend reading the book by Picot here which will explain almost everything (chapter X and XI).

Batmen were usually referred to as orderlies.

Doug