Military Service Tribunal Papers in Wilkie & Dundas Collection. wa

[rolt968]

I have been looking through some material in the local archives which has come from a firm of solicitors.

One box contains material relating to cases brought before the local burgh military tribunal and some subsequent appeals.

The box contains at least the following:

Case papers, including the completed forms and formal and informal notes made at the time.

Blank copies of various forms.

A number of different versions of the official booklets of reserved/certified occupations (and the ages they apply to).

Various official documents relating to the system.

Press cuttings: statements of the various orders, but also one or two cases from other areas presumably for reference.

Material about hardship cases, including forms, at least one separation allowance rate booklet and some case papers.

A page of "Sample cases" and how tribunals should deal with them. All the samples were to do with conscientious objectors; there were only occupational cases in the box.

Some of the cases appear several times as the regulations changed.

I will have a lot to do to sort it out as I think that apart from transfer to the archives it is virtually untouched.

I know that with the exception of the sample counties (one each in England, Scotland and Wales), the actual tribunal papers were supposed to be destroyed in the 1920s.

How common is it to find something like this?

Roger.

[Andrew Hesketh]

What a tremendous discovery!

[Guest]

Tremendous find Roger. I noted you mentioned it earlier, and was looking forward to hearing more. Did I miss it, or have you mentioned which area yet?

Mike

[rolt968]

Hi Mike,

It's Kirriemuir, Angus and surrounding area. (The same solicitor I mentioned in the 1/1st Forfarshire Volunteer Regiment thread.) I'll keep everyone posted on progress in cataloguing it.

I'm going to try to cross-reference the cases with the reports in the local papers, which usually don't mention names, but do mention occupations and sizes of farms.

Roger.

[CGM]

A number of different versions of the official booklets of reserved/certified occupations (and the ages they apply to).

I would find these very interesting.

A great find, indeed.

[Guest]

Thanks Roger, very interesting.

I wonder if these were supposed to have been destroyed, and what might be the legal status of them?

Mike

[CGM]

Presumably the firm of solicitors involved were aware of the legalities before passing them to the archives.

[MartinWills]

Roger,

There are very very few cache's of information like this - I know one similar cache was the subject of a significant academic research project and it was thought that there were very few if any other cache's of paper records. Researchers have, in the main, had to use newspaper records.

[Bernard_Lewis]

The Peace Pledge Union will be interested in conscientious objectors...

Bernard

[MichaelBully]

Amazing find indeed. Would love to know more. Yes indeed, the Peace Pledge Union archivist is always loooking for new information on CO's. Regards, Michael Bully

[Timbob1001]

A fantastic find - I have just been looking at the index of the Taunton Tribunal, but there is little more to see unfortunately since the records appear to have been deliberately destroyed.

Tim

[Guest]

I wonder if there are many other hidden archives of this type hidden in solicitors offices?

Mike

[jennifer41]

Your discovery sounds very interesting.

I recently read 'A Much Abused Body of Men' by James McDermott which considers the MST process in Northamptonshire using the documentation generated by individual cases.

Within the Lancashire Public Records Office the TA/1 file contains government guidance, examples of outcomes for voluntarily attested men, sole traders, con. objectors etc. and subsequent revisions, and details of the membership of the four Lancashire Central Appeals Tribunals with some notes as to why each person was chosen to be on the CAT. Some family deposits at the Lancashire PRO include the notifications sent by the Rural Fylde Tribunal with the outcome of their appeal, but this is only a small number.

I am looking at a specific area and have trawled the local press for coverage. Luckily as the area is so small it has been possible to link the appeals to individuals.

Regards - Jennifer

[rolt968]

Thank you to everyone for their contributions and information.

This particular cache has a number of interesting pieces of general information. For example, when farmers are trying to have workers exempt, they give very detailed statements of state of the farm at that time; number of acres of particular crops, grazing, number and type of stock and the names, ages capability and skills of the workers. (Incidentally, there were specified staffing levels for farms in England and Scotland. There is a copy of the details.)

I will keep the forum informed on progress.

Roger.

[Timbob1001]

Roger

The last sentence is fascinating.... am doing a project looking at rural Somerset for 2014. From limited sources it appears local farmers did their levels best to keep sons/senior labourers out of uniform. This documents sounds fascinating and of massive interest ....

Tim

[Magnumbellum]

I have been looking through some material in the local archives which has come from a firm of solicitors.

One box contains material relating to cases brought before the local burgh [Kirriemuir, Angus] military tribunal and some subsequent appeals.

The box contains at least the following:

Case papers, including the completed forms and formal and informal notes made at the time.

Blank copies of various forms.

A number of different versions of the official booklets of reserved/certified occupations (and the ages they apply to).

Various official documents relating to the system.

Press cuttings: statements of the various orders, but also one or two cases from other areas presumably for reference.

Material about hardship cases, including forms, at least one separation allowance rate booklet and some case papers.

A page of "Sample cases" and how tribunals should deal with them. All the samples were to do with conscientious objectors; there were only occupational cases in the box.

Some of the cases appear several times as the regulations changed.

I will have a lot to do to sort it out as I think that apart from transfer to the archives it is virtually untouched.

I know that with the exception of the sample counties (one each in England, Scotland and Wales), the actual tribunal papers were supposed to be destroyed in the 1920s.

How common is it to find something like this?

Some clarification is needed here.

The tribunals in question, set up under the Military Service Act 1916, were Military Service Tribunals, not "Military Tribunals" (the latter would imply tribunals set up and run by the military, whereas the tribunals were set up and run by, necessarily civilian, local authorities. Borough and district councils in England and Wales, and burgh councils in Scotland, were required to set up local tribunals to adjudicate on claims for exemption from military service, with a right of appeal to county appeal tribunals. By 1921 conscription had been abolished and the entire tribunal system had been wound up. In that year the Ministry of Health, successor to the Local Government Board, which had supervised the establishment of the tribunals, regarding the vast quantity of accumulated papers as serving no future purpose beyond academic study of the way the system worked (as distinct from tracing individual cases), ordered the destruction of all records except those of Middlesex, to be placed in the Public Record Office (now the National Archives), and of Lothian and Peebles, to be placed in the Scottish National Archives (Wales, then treated administratively as part of England, did not have a sample county excepted).

Despite the destruction order, some tribunal papers did survive in various places. My informed guess as to what happened in the case of Kirriemuir is that the clerk to the tribunal was a member of the firm of solicitors in question, and at some point the box of tribunal papers were assimilated into the law firm's own records. However, from the description given, the main content of the box appears to be official reference material for the guidance of the clerk and members of the tribunal, with the addition of some, but far from all, individual case papers. It is possible that the clerk selected those case papers as a sample for preservation, but it is equally possible that they were papers which had been separated from the main set because they were still being considered for one reason or another at the end, and were never replaced with the main set at the time of the order for general destruction.

[Magnumbellum]

Within the Lancashire Public Records Office the TA/1 file contains government guidance, examples of outcomes for voluntarily attested men, sole traders, con. objectors etc. and subsequent revisions, and details of the membership of the four Lancashire Central Appeals Tribunals with some notes as to why each person was chosen to be on the CAT. Some family deposits at the Lancashire PRO include the notifications sent by the Rural Fylde Tribunal with the outcome of their appeal, but this is only a small number.

The reference to "the four Lancashire Central Appeals Tribunals" must be an error for the "four Lancashire County Appeals Tribunals". The only Central Tribunal was the overarching one based in London.

[rolt968]

Despite the destruction order, some tribunal papers did survive in various places. My informed guess as to what happened in the case of Kirriemuir is that the clerk to the tribunal was a member of the firm of solicitors in question, and at some point the box of tribunal papers were assimilated into the law firm's own records. However, from the description given, the main content of the box appears to be official reference material for the guidance of the clerk and members of the tribunal, with the addition of some, but far from all, individual case papers. It is possible that the clerk selected those case papers as a sample for preservation, but it is equally possible that they were papers which had been separated from the main set because they were still being considered for one reason or another at the end, and were never replaced with the main set at the time of the order for general destruction.

I have started making an inventory of the papers. They do not appear to be documents from clerk to the tribunal, but are the papers of cases handled by the partners.

In one of my posts I was perhaps misleading in the way I listed the contents of the box. I was trying to convey the variety of material and did not indicate the proportions of each type. The majority of the material is case papers. However the two partners involved obviously kept themselves up to date with the current procedures, regulations and case law, hence the large number of official documents, versions of regulations and cuttings about cases elsewhere and clarifications of regulations and procedure.

As far as I can gather, the papers survived, because the particular firm had a large amount of storage space and never threw any papers away until the present partners moved offices a few years ago.

The various copies of regulations and cuttings are scattered through the case papers, presumably left at the last point they were used. Also left among the papers at another point is the draft notice to the local volunteer company which I mentioned in another post.

Roger.

[rolt968]

Roger

The last sentence is fascinating.... am doing a project looking at rural Somerset for 2014. From limited sources it appears local farmers did their levels best to keep sons/senior labourers out of uniform. This documents sounds fascinating and of massive interest ....

Tim

Hello Tim,

There were eventually accepted staffing levels for farms in England (and slightly later in Scotland), but the farmers were still pressurised to staff with men who would not be appropriate for the army. The farmers tried to retain their skilled workers. From the point of view of the workers, they might be (possibly temporarily) exempt, but they would lose the exemption if they changed farms and would have to start the process again.

At some point in mid 1918 virtually all existing agricultural exemptions were cancelled and everyone had to start applying again.

Roger.

[Magnumbellum]

I have started making an inventory of the papers. They do not appear to be documents from clerk to the tribunal, but are the papers of cases handled by the partners.

In one of my posts I was perhaps misleading in the way I listed the contents of the box. I was trying to convey the variety of material and did not indicate the proportions of each type. The majority of the material is case papers. However the two partners involved obviously kept themselves up to date with the current procedures, regulations and case law, hence the large number of official documents, versions of regulations and cuttings about cases elsewhere and clarifications of regulations and procedure.

As far as I can gather, the papers survived, because the particular firm had a large amount of storage space and never threw any papers away until the present partners moved offices a few years ago.

The various copies of regulations and cuttings are scattered through the case papers, presumably left at the last point they were used. Also left among the papers at another point is the draft notice to the local volunteer company which I mentioned in another post.

Thanks for the important clarification. The title of the thread certainly gives the wrong impression, implying that it was records of the Local Tribunal itself that had been found, and until now the further postings did not correct this.

As the case records of solicitors acting for applicants for exemption from military service, the papers would in no way have been covered by the order for destruction in 1921. The omission of any conscientious objection cases is also now clear - it simply means that no CO sought assistance from the firm. That is not surprising, as COs rarely sought such assistance, relying on moral argument rather than legal interpretations.

[rolt968]

Thanks for the important clarification. The title of the thread certainly gives the wrong impression, implying that it was records of the Local Tribunal itself that had been found, and until now the further postings did not correct this.

At the time when I first saw them I was unsure exactly where they had come from, particularly as an uncle of one of the solicitors was very briefly on the tribunal (I suspect because he was a councillor and magistrate.). Hence my use of "documents" not "records" in the title.

Roger.

[rolt968]

Hello everyone,

I have changed the title of this thread. I hope it gives a more accurate indication of what has been found.

Angus Archives have now numbered the collection and catalogued it in more detail. The general catalogue number is MS720/39. Individual sections are then sub-categories.

Wilkie & Dundas were a firm of solicitors in Kirriemuir and number of sets of their papers have passed into Angus Archives.

This particular box contains papers relating to cases in which they represented clients before the local Military Service Tribunals. Now that the Archive staff have sorted them out there are actually more individual cases than I thought there were. Some of the cases are grouped together under the names of farms, as the farmers were making application for a number of agricultural workers.

In addition there are very many copies of forms, regulations, individual orders, versions of the booklets of exemptions, separation allowances, newspaper cuttings and so on. I intend as soon as I can to compare these with the set of similar documents in the Mid-Lothian MST collection in the National Records of Scotland.

Wilkie (or one of the Wilkies) was captain of the local company of the Volunteer Corps and a draft copy of one of his orders for a parade was also left in the box (see another post).

 

Another local Military Service Tribunal source has also been found. It was actually already on the catalogue, but had not in fact been sent on by another archive until two weeks ago.

It is a register (large leather bound book) giving brief details (including final decisions and results of appeals) of what look to me like all the cases which came before the Forfar Military Service Tribunal (Forfar (Landward) District) from late 1916 to January 1918. (There must have been another volume following it which seems to have been lost.

The catalogue number is ACC 12/4A/1. I have only had one chance to look at it so far but I think that some of the Wilkie and Dundas cases can be cross-referenced. The writing is a bit grim and there are a lot of abbreviations. (It took me ages to realise that what looks like "L2" which appears very often in brief descriptions of decisions is actually "LT" standing I think for "Local Tribunal".)

Incidentally, Angus Archives are holding a WW1 based open day on Saturday 23 November.

http://www.angus.gov.uk/history/archives/default.htm

Roger.

[Edit 22 Nov 2013 to clarify area served by register.]

[Timbob1001]

Thanks Roger - fascinating.

Tim