The Evening Mail
Feb 15 2014 02:23:13
Feb. 15 (Birmingham Mail) -- Richard Vernalls THE last wishes of thousands of soldiers killed in the First World War and unseen for a century are being made available online.
The wills of 230,000 British Empire soldiers written in their own hand have been placed on a new website allowing families and historians to view them for the first time.
About five per cent of the wills contain a treasure trove of personal letters penned by the soldiers and intended for loved ones back home but which were never posted.
Instead, those letters have lain alongside the writers' wills in row upon row of sealed archive boxes for 100 years, until now.
In one such letter, written on August 10, 1914, Pte Joseph Witchburn of 2nd Battalion The Durham Light Infantry tells his
mother: "I dare say this will be the last letter you will
receive from me until the war is over, as I am prepared to move to the front at any moment."
An anonymous government official recorded on his will that he died of his wounds on September 14, 1914.
Another will belonging to John Fleetwood, the grandfather of Fleetwood Mac founder Mick Fleetwood, reveals his death from dysentery in a hospital in Malta on December 30, 1915, after serving in Gallipoli.
That document was discovered by leading British historian Jon Cooksey who was given access to the new database before today's website launch.
He praised the value of the archive and said: "What this does is help us, as historians, piece together the mosaic of facts which give us the real men."
Archivists at specialist record management company Iron Mountain spent five months first indexing and then painstakingly scanning by hand the soldiers' wills so they could be put onto a computer and then online.
The work was undertaken under contract from Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), which is responsible for the records.
The wills are held in a secure facility run by the company on the outskirts of Birmingham, while the digital copies are stored in a data centre in Milton Keynes.
In total, the facility houses 41 million wills and probate records dating from 1858.
All the hard copies are carefully stored in pH neutral boxes in sealed climate-controlled and fire-proof rooms where the records should survive "in perpetuity" according to Iron Mountain.
John Apthorpe, the firm's commercial director, said: "With 230,000 individuals who died in the war, the emotions (that come through) are quite interesting when you read some of the notes they left.
"A lot have straightforward statements, but some of them do have personal letters and touches, and a bit more detail about what's happening."
The wills, classed as official records, were only previously accessible through direct requests.
But very few people knew of their existence in the first place, and it is understood the Ministry of Justice - which ultimately owns the documents - only became fully aware of the archive of soldiers' wills following a freedom of information request some years ago.
What makes the wills interesting to historians and genealogists is the fact they have been written by the soldiers, rather than officials, as in the case of census data or birth records.
Mr Apthorpe said the documents had never been released to the wills' beneficiaries because as public records they belonged to the then War Office and the government.
The short-form wills presented on small pieces of paper were often handed to soldiers by their company officers and senior non- commissioned officers to be completed before embarkation for a theatre of the war, which raged across the globe from July 1914 until November 1918.
There was just enough space for the soldier to identify his chosen beneficiaries and the amount of money or object he wished to bequeath. In many cases the wills were not witnessed, however there are a few examples where soldiers "to the left and right" had signed the will of a squad mate while standing in the trenches, according to the company's archivists.
These were sealed in envelopes, sometimes together with a personal letter, and then placed in larger envelopes marked as Informal Will.
With such a precious store of records, security at the facility is tight, Mr Apthorpe said.
"Security is paramount, so there's a number of measures in place to stop unauthorised access," he stated.
"These are records that must be kept forever, in effect, so they are kept in environmentally-controlled chambers.
"There's 32 such chambers in this building and with 250,000 boxes with 41 million wills, there's an awful lot of information that needs protecting."
Professor Peter Simkins, president of the Western Front Association, said the archive presented "layers of value" for future generations.
"I think they represent about a quarter of British Empire soldiers who died in the war and that gives us a big sample, and you can follow up into groups and sub groups and establish patterns of social behaviour," he said.
"You can read their handwriting, telling you roughly how educated they were. You begin to get an impression, if you have three or four people from the same place, how educated that community might have been.
The archive can be accessed at
www.gov.uk/probate-search