Jump to content
Free downloads from TNA ×
The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Widows of men presumed dead


Perth Digger

Recommended Posts

The Registrar-General did not issue death certificates for officers or men officially presumed dead by the War Office. But I believe they kept a record of all military deaths in the Great War, possibly keeping the presumed dead separate. The statement of presumed death issued by the War Office could be used for obtaining money from insurance companies and for matters of probate. It could also be used to obtain war pensions. In other words, it appears to have acted in the same way as an official death certificate issued by the Registrar-General. In one respect I remain uncertain about its use and would be grateful for any assistance. Could widows remarry using the presumed death statement as proof of their husband's death? Or did they have to wait seven years, which I believe was the common law period of a person being missing before being deemed dead? Looking at some remarriages of "presumed dead" officers' widows I presume the seven year rule did not apply, but I have been unable to find any official statement on what the situation was for the these widows of the presumed dead. Nor do I know where to look for an answer.

 

Thanks

 

Mike

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My understanding is that it was not for the Registrar, (and thus the Registrar-General) to decide on whether someone was dead - they were merely "registering" information received from the relevant authority recognised in law. In most UK deaths there would be a body and date of death would be confirmed by a medical authority. If the date of death was unknown then there would be a coroners inquiry that would try to tie that down and then pass that information to the Registrar.

 

Going outside the UK - If the death was at sea then the non-military Ships Captain would authorise the date of death and pass the information on to the Board of Trade who would notify the Registrar-General for inclusion in the Deaths at Sea Register. Where date of death was not known or in the event of Ship Loss an Admiralty Court would perform the roll of a Coroners Inquiry.

 

For those members of the Armed Forces who died overseas, and for non-military deaths, there were similar routes. For those missing presumed killed, the Army would make enquiries but eventually these routes would be exhausted, a Military tribunaral would be held, (probably in many cases a rubber stamp), and on the advice received they would formally treat the man as dead. This information wouild be passed to the Registrar-General - as far as I'm aware there was no separate register of Presumed Dead because that wasn't their role, Remember the Army had a financial incentive to resolve the matter - while the soldier was still officially missing they would carry on owing full pay. Declare them dead and the money for the widow and dependants comes out of the budget of the Ministry of Pensions. I have come across a couple of reports of court cases from 1920 where the authorities were still chasing outstanding avenues and so the family went to court to get the man formally declared dead but I very much doubt anyone had to wait seven years and then take that route. You only have to look at the additional information on CWGC database - mainly gathered in the nid-1920's as it's predecessor the IWGC set about installing permanent grave markers and building memorials  - to realise how many widows had remarried.

 

Hope that helps,

Peter

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for this information, Peter, which I'll have to absorb. One point though: a missing officer was only paid in full for three months. Presumably ORs would not be paid any longer.

 

Mike

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have wondered abou that myself, and the replies are very informative, but one question bugs me, in many of my mens cases of those who had a known grave, some  relatives  were not officially informed up  to 10 months later. Why did it take so long, if he had a known grave, and his mates had written to his relatives where he was buried

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know the answer to that, Retlaw, because all my research is on officers. But I would imagine that it was to do either with pressure of work at the Base (3rd Echelon) or slow returns coming into the Base from the GRUs (or both). MS 3 Cas at the War Office dealt with officers, but they too normally did not inform next of kin of where the officer was buried for many months, if at all. Most of the forms coming from the Base giving death details usually had a typed section saying that place of burial was unknown. I'll see if I can dig one out.

 

Mike

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From my reading of all too many officer files at Kew:

 

1) Death certificates , of the Reg-Gen. type, were not issued. But the War Office- that, is  MS  3 Cas. would issue a notice that a man was dead, for Probate, Grants of Letters of Administration and for application for  relief from Death Duties.

2)  My understanding  of the "official" end of the war being in 1921 was that any man still "missing" at that date was automatically dead for legal purposes. We can often chortle about the "official" end of the war being a date picked by Civil Servants but there were serious administrative reasons for this.

3)  On the delay of notification of death- there is a significant difference between what the man's  comrades may have known.as to what really went on in an attack- and what the army authorities actually knew.  It is quite common to see that a man was known to be dead  by his comrades-and the family hearing it that way-and even to be reported as such. In those cases, almost invariably the man was initially reported "Wounded and Missing"    His mates might have been sure he was dead (or could not long have survived) but not the Army. Hence, the large number of Casualty List entries with corrected report "Previously reported wounded and missing, now reported dead".

    To me, they key to this is to look at  ICRC Prisoners-  OK, it is not perfect but I have puzzled why some men listed as wounded and missing are not on ICRC. It seems that if the Brits. sent a list of casualties to the German government and no information was forthcoming, then a man was usually downgraded from wounded and missing, to "dead".

4)  For various local casualties, my understanding is that  a missing man was usually "Dead for Official Purposes" from aprrox. 1 year after the first report of being missing. This, of course, had implications  for different types of pension provision (and also to whom the monies were charged to)  but that is Craig's territory and I am sure he will chirp in quite soon(Please)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

GUEST

Sorry not to have replied sooner. 

Re (2): if that is right then the numbers "Missing" in the Medical Statistics book would probably have been the numbers still presumed dead at that time. Also, was responsibility for dealing with the missing passed from the WO to the IWGC in 1921? 

 

My preliminary take on the missing for the first part of the war can be found here: http://www.greatwarbritishofficers.com/index_htm_files/Casualty Preparation 1914 Article.pdf

 

 

Mike

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Mike-  Bedtime reading. The short answer for the official end of the war transfer to CWGC is that I don't know-what I wrote was based on a WW2 casualty I chased with CWGC.

    I suspect a  call to Maidenhead will give us the answer,

 

The story of HOW  the missing were searched for physically is fairly well-known. Just how searches were made through  paper records while graves registration were working post-war is a complete mystery to me.  The concentration and cemetery cards  suggest that access to information to enable identification was quite well honed but I have never seen any account of how it was done or who did it-or whether any records were available in France as opposed to London-and even then, it looks to me that CWGC went through the army system as records were all over the place.  The Arnside fire is a popular topic but the tale of HOW these records came to be gathered together or how they were arranged for access is not.  -though our colleagues who have posted on Arnside seem to have found plenty of records about the stuff.  We have recently had the Long,Lost Relative programme with Davina McCall, which showed a simplistic glimpse into  MoD research. Quite how this was done a century ago, without modern computer systems evokes a great deal of admiration as to how efficient and generally accurate their work was.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

GUEST

Re the accuracy of the CWGC, you might like to look at the work of Laughton on this site, in particular the last in this thread: https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/262480-templeux-le-guerard-british-cemetery-case-4-private-nairn-s43045/?tab=comments#comment-2677963 

 

Before the issuing of two IDs, when bodies were found with IDs, the IDs waere taken to prove who the dead were and the bodies were given a GRU cross. When later the bodies were recovered for concentration, if the cross had been lost in subsequent fighting it would have been very difficult to prove who they were, especially ORs. That is partly why more than half the names on the memorials to the missing were officially declared killed during the war (and were not officially missing). 

 

It was easier to identify officers, usually by a process of elimination. How 'generally accurate' the IWGC was is an open question. This is not to disparage their work.

 

Mike

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...