weekly casualty lists start date on line access

[chaz]

just been looking through the weekly casualty lists that NLS have hosted up.

As far as I can see list 1 starts from 30th July 1917.  list no 5324.

is there any where that has earlier ones or where can they be found?

[TEW]

They were previously published in The Times.

Coverage varies for Officers, BEF and Colonial troops.

The Times stopped printing around April 1917 for BEF. There is a gap for roughly April to Late July 1917. Having said that The Scotsman printed lists of wounded Scots in that gap.

TEW

[AndrewSid]

Chaz,

Firstly be aware NLS have one list missing - number 63

As TEW said  (we have chatted on this back in early 2022!) the Times published all the lists initially.  Local and Regional papers published reduced lists based regional/local interest/relevance.

The Times stopped printing as the Arras offensive started in 1917.  They simply couldn’t cope with the numbers, although a paper shortage was blamed. 

Their last full list of killed and wounded men and ORs was on the 10th of May 1917.  Only a few of the early Arras casualties made the list in my opinion.

As you have stated the first HMSO list was the 30th July 1917 one.  An 80 day gap.  Again, with the lag in reporting, and speaking roughly, as casualty reporting was not uniform or in wounding date order, men wounded from early April until early  July were not published.   In that gap period the lists sill existed and you see snippets of wounded lists appearing in regional papers, noting of course a lot have not yet been digitised. 

Hope that ramble makes sense.

You original question about the Times.  I access through Hertfordshire Libraries for free.  Your local library will hopefully have a similar arrangement.  Be warned though searching the Times Lists  can be rough going.

Andy

[MaureenE]

The followed is copied from the FIBIS Fibiwiki page British Army, section Records/ WW1 Casualty Lists

https://wiki.fibis.org/w/British_Army#WW1_Casualty_Lists   (FIBIS Fibiwiki is very slow currently).

WW1 Casualty Lists

In its military sense, the term "casualty" includes all those who are killed in action or who die of wounds, as well as those who are wounded, listed as missing, or taken prisoner of war.^[66]

WW1 Casualty Lists were initially published on a daily basis in newspapers, but WO original lists no longer appear to exist. They were then published weekly by HMSO, as War Office Weekly Casualty List no.1-48 (7 Aug.1917 - 2 July 1918), and later as Weekly Casualty List (War Office & Air Ministry) no.49-83 (9 July 1918 - 4 March 1919), available at some libraries. 

Daily lists may be found in online newspaper databases such as The [London] Times Digital Archive, for access see Miscellaneous tips, and The Scotsman in Scotland, the latter initially all casualties but later limited to Scots related. TheGenealogist, a pay website, as part of its Diamond premium subscription, includes a database "Military and Casualty Lists"^[67], which appears to consist of Daily Lists transcribed from newspapers, together with Weekly Lists transcribed and with images, from British Library held original publications,^[68] with data to April 1918,^[69] (Weekly List No. 36 April 9th 1918^[70]) but with some gaps in the data, and Officers seem to be listed to 1920.^[71] Added July 2017, with later 1919 additions,  findmypast and the British Newspaper Archive^[72], under Weekly Casualty List (War Office & Air Ministry) contain Lists from 7 Aug. 1917 to 4 Mar. 1919 (currently (2019/01/06) missing publications between 1 Jan. and 23 Apr. 1918), and not all editions may be complete.^[73] These websites may also contain newspapers with Daily Lists. On findmypast, the Weekly Lists may be located either in the category Newspapers and periodicals, or in the category Armed Forces & Conflict/First World War in the databases "British Army, First World War Casualty Lists", and the related Browse database,^[74]which have different viewing formats, the latter much easier to view/browse than the Newspapers format. Note, however, the Armed Forces category does not contain any 1919 publications.
Update 17 July 2019, National Library of Scotland released a free database of all weekly Casualty Lists,^[75] except one, and currently (2021/09/28) the NLS database is still missing List No. 63, 15 October 1918.  Note, some missing names were noted in the NLS pages, due to cropping at the margins during the filming (an example^[75]), so it is worthwhile trying different sources of databases for comparison if you cannot find a name of interest.

Weekly Casualty List No. 78, January 28th, 1919 is known to contain names of "Released Prisoners of War from Germany, arrived in England".^[76] It is possible that names of released POWs are similarly contained in other editions, particularly those issued after 11 December 1918.

Note, online searching may be unsuccessful due to the underlying poor quality OCR text caused by the tiny font used in the original lists.^[73]

Note, the above Casualty Lists include British personnel serving in the Indian Army.^[77]

 

^Maureen

[TEW]

Maureen,

That Fibis extract should be pinned somewhere.

I can never remember the dates of the gaps or the coverage for officers etc.

There was another discussion about the lists back in 2014.

The Times produced an article on the upcoming lists.

 

TEW

[chaz]

thanks all, very informative.

will be trying to seek out relations from early in the war.