Update on PT6 Scottish First World War pension appeals records

An update on a collection that I first blogged about in 2012, the PT6 records featuring First World War Pension Apeals Tribunals, as held by the National Records of Scotland (www.nrscotland.gov.uk).

Last week, via the ScotlandsPeople Facebook page, Scottish Indexes asked about the progress of efforts to catalogue this important collection, something that was first announced in 2021 (see https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2021/01/pt6-scottish-pensions-appeal-records.html). This was the NRS's response:

"The Pension Appeal Tribunal records (ref. PT6) were catalogued as a result of funding by the Wellcome Trust. This project didn’t quite complete cataloguing the whole collection, but work is currently underway to address this shortfall. Work to capture digital images was not included in the Wellcome Trust project, but imaging work is currently in progress. Discussions will soon be taking place regarding the potential for online release, though no decisions or timescales have yet been agreed."

I'm sure they'll get there in the end!

For more on the collection, read the guest contribuiton to my blog from reader Tunji Lees, as first published in January 2012 - http://britishgenes.blogspot.com/2012/01/guest-post-scottish-ww1-pensions-appeal.html. The following is Tunji's summary of what is available within each record:

General information
-Name of the soldier (+ name of the applicant, and relationship to soldier, if not the same)
-His address
-Age
-Pre-enlisting occupation
-Employer before the war (on later applications only)
-Employer after the war (on later applications only)
-Insurance society (on later applications only)

Military information
-Rank & unit
-Service no
-When first attested
-When discharged
-Reason for discharge
-Details on pre-war service (if applicable)
-Details on service 1914-1921 (when and where he served, and in what units)

Information on application
-Date of the hearing and in which courtroom it was held (the hearings were held at 3 Parliament Square, Edinburgh)
-Disability from which the man claimed to be suffering
-Whether the appeal was allowed or disallowed (many were in fact disallowed)
-If allowed, how much the applicant received, and whether he got a lump sum or a fixed rate, and for how long

Each file also has some information on the soldier's medical history.

Chris 

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PT6 Scottish Pensions Appeal records

Earlier today on the Scottish Indexes conmference (www.scottishindexes.com), there was discussion on the Scottish WW1 pension records from the NRS at PT6. The following was a post I put up two years ago, which provides a bit more on these:

13 January 2018

Some welcome news concerning a potentially major resource in Edinburgh for those researching First World War military ancestors from Scotland and their dependants.

I've been contacted by reader Tunji Lees, to provide an update on a discovery he made over 5 years ago at the National Records of Scotland, and for which he wrote a great guest post for this blog. As noted on 2 JAN 2012, Tunji had found that the NRS held Scottish WW1 Pension Appeals Tribunal records, as catalogued under PT6. The key points were as follows:

The records are catalogued under the reference PT6 and contain the pension application records of 1000s of Scottish soldiers - and next of kin of soldiers (usually widows) - who suffered from injuries sustained in the war, or died after the war due to injuries. These appear to be the Scottish equivalent of the PIN26 series for England and Wales (which, unlike the Scottish PT6 series, is indexed). Whereas the PT26 series appears to only be a selection of the disability pensions awarded to English and Welsh soldiers after the First World War, the Scottish PT6 series appears to be complete...

The applications are organised in boxes alphabetically by month, from November 1919 (reference PT6/1), to December 1932 (reference PT6/288). That's about 29 meters (or 95 feet) of pension records! There are also records from the same series covering post-WW2 disability pension applications, however seeing as they are closed for 75 years, the first set (those from 1945) will only be available in 2021.

It doesn't appear as if any genealogists are aware of the existence of these records, as they aren’t mentioned in the NAS publication Tracing your Scottish Ancestors, or in any guides to tracing WW1 ancestry that I've read, although they're a fantastic source of information on Scottish army ancestors.

Tunji's full account of these records, including the potential detail available in each file, is available at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/guest-post-scottish-ww1-pensions-appeal.html.

Tunji has now contacted me with the news that the charitable foundation Wellcome Trust has apparently approved a Research Resource Grant for work to index the records. The grant is believed to fund work for 24 months, which potentially means the job will have been completed by the end of December 2019. Tunji has also stated that as it is a grant, indexed records will be made available free of charge, posisble through the ScotlandsPeople website. It is unclear as yet whether this will just be the index, or digital images of the records themselves. Tunji's final point is that the records, referenced under PT6, have disappeared from the catalogue, perhaps because they have been removed for indexing.

Once again a huge thank you to Tunji for such a fascinating update on a collection with a great deal of potential for ancestral research!

Chris

No further update, but definitely one to keep an eye out on!

Chris

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Further release of Ireland's Military Service Pensions Committee claims

From Ireland's Military Archives (www.militaryarchives.ie), the latest release of Military Service Pension Collection records, with over 2 million pages of content now scanned as part of the project:

November 2020 Release

The November 2020 release is the 9th release from the Military Service (1916-1923) Pensions Collection.
The files relate to claims lodged by 1,170 individuals, or by their dependants, and contain new information on the War of Independence and the Civil War.
This release brings the number of individuals whose files are now available online to over 10,720 entries (representing over 32,000 files).
Taking into account all the MSPC file series (whether available online or in the Military Archives), over 100,000 files have been processed individually by the Project team to date.
The files released include:
 - 139 successful service pensions awarded under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1924 (National Army applicants/Pro-Treaty).
 - 604 files of claimants applying under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934
 - 554 applications under Army Pensions Acts (from 1923 onwards), including wounds and Special Allowances linked to disability pensions. 

A full list of those named in this release can be found at http://www.militaryarchives.ie/fileadmin/user_upload/MSPC/2020/Release_names.pdf

(Source: http://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/military-service-pensions-collection-1916-1923/release-history/november-2020-release)

Chris

My next 5 week Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the Old Parish Registers course starts November 2nd - see https://www.pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=302. My book Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is now out, also available are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.