MH 47 - Middlesex Military Service Tribunal papers

[David_Underdown]

As has been mentioned on the forum previously, The National Archives has been digitising the record series MH 47 which contains the records of the Middlesex Military Service Tribunal - Middlesex was selected as a representative sample after the war while the records for other counties were (generally) destroyed - some partially survive in local record offices. The Lothian and Peebles Tribunal papers were selected as the Scottish sample and are held by NRS (it would appear that as was generally the case at the time, England and Wales was treated as a single jurisdiction).

The work was grant funded, so the images can be downloaded from Discovery free of charge. Today's blog post, Commemorating Conscription describes some of the ways the records can be searched, eg by location, occupation etc, in addition to simple name searches.

[sarahbenson]

Thanks for the update - for some reason there doesn't seem to have been the fanfare for this that there was about the war diaries! The records make fascinating reading, as in the couple of examples I have looked at there are verbatim transcripts from the tribunal ("What would you do if your wife were attacked in front of you?").

What is also interesting is the breakdown of the grounds for applying for exemption - in the 313 cases I found when I searched for Chiswick, only 16 seem to have been on the grounds of conscientious objection. Most seem to relate to grounds such as ill-health, that the man serving would lead to hardship, etc.

[David_Underdown]

There's a launch event today, so media coverage will probably pick up later (with the war diaries the media event was the day before). Of course, the fact the records really only cover one county too, which may limit press interest.

Some of the previous blog posts about this project (linked from today's I think) address the proportion of conscientious objection to other reasons for exemption. This post, Schoolboys in uniform or not about the records in ED 12 covering the Board of Education's powers to exempt those studying (or applying to study) certain courses in science and engineering, may also be of interest (these records are not digitised however.

[NigelS]

An article in today's Daily Telegraph (23rd January) Click & TNA news item Click

NigelS

Edit: link to TNA MH47 record search & guidance notes Click

[Derek Black]

Great stuff, a real pity more don't exist.

Many tribunal minutes were published at the time in my local towns newspaper, often with much description of the mans situation regarding age, employement, family members and other details so that locals would certainly know who was being mentioned, so no hardly any anonymity at the time even though no names were given.

[stu]

This is fantastic, I've already found someone claiming ( eventually successfully ) C.O living in a house I lived in 25 years ago.

I've also found a man who married a great, great aunt of mine, he claimed exemption due to his work, he was unsuccessful and called up eventually in February 1918, and I've found two men living either side of a great uncle of mine who was killed on 17/02/17, both men were claiming due to their employment, both were unsuccessful, I wonder how my great uncle's family felt about this, he left his wife and six children.

Judging by the cases I've looked at, it is evident that often, if a man was exempted by his local tribunal, it was no guarantee of permanent exemption, often the local military representative had the case appealed and taken to the county tribunal, who it appears very frequently overturned the local tribunal's decision.

Fascinating stuff, well done to the N.A for making this available free of charge.

[rolt968]

One set of documents in this set will be of interest to people even if they are not interested in Middlesex.

MH47/142/1,2,3,4,6 (all downloadable) contain various documents related to the operation of conscription and tribunals, including various versions of the tables of occupations which were exempt and the related ages, a much lengthier version of sample cases for the advice of tribunals than the set which I mentioned in another post and so on!

Roger.