National Roll of the Great War

[tootrock]

Having just looked up a man in this publication I notice that after each entry there is some sort of reference number e.g. X18997.

Does anyone have any idea as to what this refers to?

Martin

[travers61]

Findmypast has this in its description of that record set:

Finally, each entry has a reference number (such as Z2323A in the case of WG Cudd mentioned above). The significance of this reference is no longer clear but presumably referred to a card-index or other filing system used by the publishers to track contributions to the book and published entries.

https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/national-roll-of-the-great-war-1914-1918

Having looked at some relatives of mine on the Southampton Roll it seems these numbers start at 1 for the first entry (Sgt J AARON) to 7148 & are almost consecutive with the alphabetical order entries are printed in the book.  My relatives at the same address have consecutive numbers, but entries for other families at a single address seem to have the same number followed by a letter eg 1234A, 1234B etc. This is logical perhaps where a single family entry was submitted as a group rather than two separate entries at separate times.  

I can't see any pattern in the letter prefixes.

There are even some entries with two numbers.

There seems no consensus across the surviving volumes as the Leeds volume starts with number 1001.

Travers

Edited 27 November , 2023 by travers61