What is this newpaper request about?

[rolt968]

The following appeared in the Aberdeen Evening Express of 23 September 1916:

There follows a longish list of names, ages, addresses and occupations.

 

My question - what is this about?

 

(My initial reaction is that it is a list of men who had "disappeared" since the introduction of conscription. However it includes the name of a man who would have found it difficult to disappear as he was chauffeur to a local family which included a well known prime minister. The address given is their residence.)

RM

Edited 14 January , 2019 by rolt968

[ss002d6252]

I would agree - I've seen similar lists in other papers where they've being trying to track men down. I think it was a subtle way of telling the men they were on to them as opposed to labelling them all outright as deserters (even if they suspected some were).

 

Craig

Edited 14 January , 2019 by ss002d6252

[rolt968]

I wonder what action or inaction triggered placing a man's name on the list.

As far as I know my man was chauffeur to the Gladstones of Fasque. You feel that if someone turned up and asked where he was when he was away from home driving one of the Gladstones the army would have believed a member of the Gladstone family. But perhaps the army didn't ask.

 

RM

[Guest]

Did your man actually join the armed forces?   I have a similar problem  with a man locally who for a long time I could not track down any connection to the area-just some place in North Wales- which was the country seat of a wealthy local family here in the east of London. The man had come from Wales to be a chauffeur in London. Could this be the same for your man?  Fasque was was the Gladstone holiday home in effect.  It may well be that he was chauffering a Gladstone elsewhere in the UK but happened to fetch up on the MSA listing for Fasque.

   I came across recently the wartime diaries of  Mrs Asquith-  H.H.received many birthday greetings from the great and the good but she records the one that he most appreciated was from his former servant, who had been commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment (a contrast to Harold Macmillan's snub about Mr. Speaker Wetherall- that the Commons was letting in his tailor)

[ss002d6252]

38 minutes ago, rolt968 said:

I wonder what action or inaction triggered placing a man's name on the list.

As far as I know my man was chauffeur to the Gladstones of Fasque. You feel that if someone turned up and asked where he was when he was away from home driving one of the Gladstones the army would have believed a member of the Gladstone family. But perhaps the army didn't ask.

 

RM

I would expect it was that he didn't turn up for conscription or they had some belief he was no longer resident at a property (residence was required to be reported under the National Registration Act).

Craig

[rolt968]

It seems to be more bizarre than I thought.

He was born in Fettercairn village.

According to de Ruvigny he enlisted on 19 October 1915; in Reading (according to SDGW), in MT ASC.

He died of appendicitis in 3 Canadian CCS in May 1918.

RM