Charles Fair Posted 9 September , 2004 Author Share Posted 9 September , 2004 the number of former Volunteers choosing to transfer to the Territorial Force varied considerably between different units. The 5th Battalion, The North Staffordshire Regiment, formed from the old 1st Volunteer Battalion, recorded the best retention figures amongst the infantry battalions, with 605 other ranks re-enlisting by June 1908, ..... By June 1908, only 332 former members of the 3rd Volunteer Battalion had re-engaged.... Of the former Volunteers who had transferred to the Territorial Force, many had chosen to enlist for a period of one year only. Andrew, great stats, v interesting to see the wide range of reenlistment rates in 1908. I dont yet have any idea how London units compare, but would guess the range is similar. Please see this attachment which gives some idea of the renlistment rates after 1909, and the length of reengagement. It also gives the reasons for discharge as stated in the minutes. Would be particularly interested in your comments on this. Reenlistment_and_discharge.doc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Fair Posted 12 September , 2004 Author Share Posted 12 September , 2004 I have compiled an overview of the stengths of the battalions of the London Regiment (1st - 24th only a the moment) for the years 1909, 1910, 1911, 1913 (I lack 1912... anyone with the 1912 Annual Return?). For convenience I have included also the strength (and establishments) of the battalion's predecessor in the Volunteer Force for the year 1907. However, please note that the conversion from the Volunteer Force to the Territorial Force went a little more subtle as indicated by those figures which are related to one volunteer battalion only. Please use the Word document in the next message for a more complete overview of the amalgamations etc upon transfer to the TF in 1908. An update on the 1907 numbers wil include some more details. Hi Weinand A huge thanks for this, very very useful statistics. I will try and dig out the 1912 figures next time I am in the PRO. I will also try and find some data for 1908 as well. Useful to see the comparison with the 1907 figures. Thanks for the other file which shows the relationship with theVolunteer bns - something which has always confused me. I hope you dont mind, but I have taken your excel file and with some careful cut and paste have developed a slightly different version. (this didnt take long, I happen to spend a lot of time on xls at work.) I have also added in the data for July 1909 and July 1910 from my initial post which gives more data points for battalions 9 to 24. I hope the TF enthousiasts find this list useful. I have not looked in detail into the numbers, but to me it seems there was a general trend of falling numbers (save a few exceptions). Looking forward to your comments. The new version includes some calculations of total strength for the 24 bns, as well as calculations of average strength. These clearly show up the decline in numbers - about 30% below establishment in Oct 1913, which is consistent with other data that I have about the TF in London. It is interesting to see which battalions seem to be consistently better recruited. many thanks once again Charles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Fair Posted 12 September , 2004 Author Share Posted 12 September , 2004 ~#*&$€ - Unlike Wienand, for some reason I cant seem to be able post xls files to the forum, I just get an error message. I can cut & paste into a word document, but that isnt quite the same - will try and work a way round this - Chris? Charles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wienand Drenth Posted 12 September , 2004 Share Posted 12 September , 2004 Charles, What sort of error message do you get? That might give some answer to the cause, however, most error messages are totally incomprehensible. As I didn't have problems with posting appearently, I you would like to you can email the file to me and I can post it for you. In a/the next posting I will reply to your reply to my dataposting. Regards, Wienand Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wienand Drenth Posted 12 September , 2004 Share Posted 12 September , 2004 Hello Charles, Thanks for your comments, and I will be happy to do some more typing on the other TF units. Those Annual Returns include much more detail than I gave: they include camp figures, and what number of men attended how much of the camp. There is a table detailing increase and decrease, with motivation; I guess this will be interesting to you. There is a table detailing past service of nco's, a table detailing the ages of nco's and men, etc etc. Nice addition is that the 1907 tables include total VF figures going back to 1861!, and figures arranged by arm from 1898. Nice other feature is they already calculated the percentage of efficients, a term that seems to have gone into disuse by 1909. Please feel free to "use" my excel sheet. It was only a very modest exercise in excel, my first one it think, so I didn't play around with calculating ratios, avarages and other interesting statistics. I still have to figure that all out. I am looking forward seeing your organisation of the data. You put forward an idea to made a database detailing the strength of the TF between 1908 and 1914. What kind of data and statistics should be in there? Given the amount of information contained in the Annual Returns, the variation seems to be endless. Nevertheless, I would be more than happy to participate in this xls exercise, and put to use those Annual Returns! As for a list showing the relationship between the VF and TF battalions, the one for the London Regiment is the most horrible in my opinion. Especially since most battalions remained styled as a "Corps" and not as a Volunteer Battalion. Best wishes, Wienand Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wienand Drenth Posted 14 September , 2004 Share Posted 14 September , 2004 As indicated above, Charles couldn't upload for some strange reaon a xls file. So here it is, the modified list of the 1st - 24th battalions of the London Regiment with some more statistics (and much better layout ;-)). By courtesy of Charles Fair. Regards, Wienand londonregiment4.xls Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Fair Posted 14 September , 2004 Author Share Posted 14 September , 2004 Many thanks Weinand. I could download it with no problem. regards Charles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Fair Posted 3 October , 2004 Author Share Posted 3 October , 2004 I managed to get into the PRO yesterday to look at WO 114/114 - TF unit strangths 1908-14. I obtained the data for Oct 1908 and Oct 1912 for the infantry battalions for the two London TF divisions and will enter these into the spreadsheet in due course. Something to do whilst commuting on the train. This is a really superb source, wish I had had seen it years ago. It seems as if this source was actually a quarterly return, with statistics being produced every year in Jan, Apr, July & Oct. The PRO has data for the following quarters: 1908 Jul & Oct 1909 Oct only 1911 Jan, Apr, July & Oct 1912 Jan, Apr, July & Oct 1913 Jan, Apr, July & Oct 1914 Jan, Apr, July In addition, the April 1913 data has additional data pasted in for May & Jun 1913, and the July 1913 data has additional data pasted in for Aug & Sept 1913. Weinand, I'm intrigued as to how you managed to obtain this data - even the PRO doesnt have the data for Oct 1910! As you can see from the list above, the PRO has only one quarter in 1909 and nothing for 1910. Now that I have had a good look at the source data, I think that the best way of handling this might be to do one spreadsheet for each TF division. I think this will be easier and less complex way of ordering the data rather than by the 80 TF Associations. (Unless you know which TF Association was responsible for each unit I think it will be quite difficilut to tie the two up.) I will do the two London TF divisions. Once I have done the infantry I will go back into the PRO and add in the RFA, RE, RAMC and RASC for ech division. This will be relatively easy to do as each arm os service is organised by TF division. I will also have a look at the 19th Londons to calculate quarterly turnover and recruitment figures. This souce gives the number of recruits (both new and with prior service) for every unit each quarter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westkent78 Posted 24 April , 2005 Share Posted 24 April , 2005 As indicated above, Charles couldn't upload for some strange reaon a xls file. So here it is, the modified list of the 1st - 24th battalions of the London Regiment with some more statistics (and much better layout ;-)). By courtesy of Charles Fair. Regards, Wienand <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Does anyone have a copy of the above list? It appears to have been lost in the forum move. Thank you, Matthew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Fair Posted 4 May , 2005 Author Share Posted 4 May , 2005 (edited) Hi Matthew, i think this is the latest version that we had posted on the forum. There is a lot more to come, we have since filled in most of the gaps for both London TF divs. I have been hoping to finish the artillery TF stats for some time but the day job keeps getting in the way. Charles Mmm - for some reason i cant upload anything with an xls file extension. Meanwhile please find attached a word version of the file i orginally posted last year. London_TF_Strengths_190910_word_version.doc Edited 4 May , 2005 by Charles Fair Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westkent78 Posted 5 May , 2005 Share Posted 5 May , 2005 Thank you very much Charles. Very interesting information. It will be interesting to see the finished article and track the prewar progress of each battalion. I know what you mean about the day job getting in the way of research. Regards, Matthew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagleeye Posted 5 May , 2005 Share Posted 5 May , 2005 Hi Matthew, i think this is the latest version that we had posted on the forum. There is a lot more to come, we have since filled in most of the gaps for both London TF divs. I have been hoping to finish the artillery TF stats for some time but the day job keeps getting in the way. Charles Mmm - for some reason i cant upload anything with an xls file extension. Meanwhile please find attached a word version of the file i orginally posted last year. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagleeye Posted 5 May , 2005 Share Posted 5 May , 2005 Charles My grandfather was in the RAMC TF at the outbreak of war, he was in one of the London units but I cannot find out which. You seem to have an extensive knowledge of the TF, have you any suggestions as to where I should look to find out which unit he was actually in. I know that he embarked with the 2Bn Grenadier Guards in August 1914 but do not know what RAMC unit he was in. Any ideas where I may find this out? Any help would be appreciated regards Rod Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Fair Posted 9 May , 2005 Author Share Posted 9 May , 2005 My grandfather was in the RAMC TF at the outbreak of war, he was in one of the London units but I cannot find out which. I know that he embarked with the 2Bn Grenadier Guards in August 1914 but do not know what RAMC unit he was in. Any ideas where I may find this out? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hi Rod Not sure I can help you much. The two London TF divisions between them had 6 Field Ambulances. The London TF also had the following types and number of RAMC units which were army troops: 4 x General Hospitals 2 x Sanitary Companies 1 x London Mounted Brigade Field Ambulance 2 x Clearing Hospitals An RAMC TF man embarking with 2 Gren Gds sounds unlikely at first. However, 2 Gren Gds were brigaded from late 1914 until about Aug 1915 in 4th (Guards) Bde, 2 Div. This Bde also included 1/1 Hertfordshire Regt, the only TF bn to have been brigaded with the Guards. (The Herts were known as 'The Herts Guards' for sometime after this.) I am therefore wondering whether 2 Div also included an RAMC TF Field Ambulance. Possibly one of those left over from the break up of 1st London Div TF (later reconsituted as 56 Div) i.e. 1, 2 or 3rd London Field Ambulance? If there is a history of 2 Div it might help. Charles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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