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An overview of the Pension System immediately after the War

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The following article by Craig Suddick takes an overview of the pension system immediately after the First World War. With the release of The Western Front Pension Records to Ancestry, the record set has generated a large amount of research potential, the preliminary works for this research being undertaken by David Tattersfield on The Western Fro…

The Disabled First World War Soldier : how his pension was calculated

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A man who was discharged as medically unfit where that unfitness was certified as being either caused by or aggravated by military service was eligible to apply for a disability pension. Later in the war, as men were being demobilised, they were given the chance to put forward any disability for assessment by the Ministry of Pensions. Any disabilit…

Pension Claims: Same Man, Different Claim

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The following article, by Craig Suddick, looks at a fairly uncommon scenario: the pension claim for a deceased serviceman coming from two different sources, in two different regions. The issue, identified by the Ministry of Pensions potentially arose due to pension claims being administered regionally. Because of this regional administration, it so…

The Ministry of Pensions during and after the Great War

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The Ministry of Pensions was a truly monolithic organisation, by the end of 1920 it had 19,121 staff, was paying 1,600,000 pensions, and spending more than £23,000,000 per year. Above: The Bromyard Avenue site in Acton that was the Ministry of Pensions offices (built in about 1921) seems now to be a residential complex. What is often lost in t…

The Military Service (Civil Liabilities) Department

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Perhaps one of the most unusual items to be found within the Ministry of Pension card index are the surviving slips for a 'Proposed Grant by the Military Service (Civil Liabilities) Department’. It appears that these slips originally formed part of a separate index and were later amalgamated into the main Ministry of Pension index. In early March …

Chelsea and the disabled soldier

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At the outbreak of war in 1914 each of the two great military departments, the War Office and the Admiralty, dealt with their own pensions. It was soon clear, however, that this system would be difficult to manage. This was especially so in the case of the War Office who used the Chelsea Hospital to calculate and pay any disability or widows pensio…

Using the RFC to unlock the workings of widow’s pensions

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It was only in early 1915, 6 months in to the war, that the War Office began paying pensions to the widows of those soldiers who had been killed. This wasn’t down to any lack of a pension system, it was down to an inherent 6-month delay between death and a pension being paid to allow time for the man to turn up alive, and any necessary paperwork to…

Ministry of Pensions Regional Offices

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After the First World War, the Ministry of Pensions (for a short time) created a number of regional offices in order to deal with the administration of pensions paid to disabled soldiers. The location of these offices had been a bit of a mystery. Until now. It is of interest to know where the administration of these pensions took place. Some of t…

How Reference numbers were used in WW1 Pension claims at Chelsea and in the Pension Issue Office

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In this article the author looks at those pension reference systems used by the Ministry of Pensions, with specific reference to Chelsea and the Pension Issue Office, across the period of 1914 to the 1920s. Within the monolith that was the Ministry of Pensions, the two largest departments were Chelsea, which dealt with all pensions for disabled so…