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General => Armed Forces => Topic started by: Mhillbilly on Tuesday 06 May 25 07:51 BST (UK)
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I need help to understand how army service length is calculated and how a court martial sentence length would interact with date of discharge.
I have calculated length of time between known dates and cannot reconcile how the calculation is made.
My 2GG grandfather was in the 12th Lancers from at least 1871 to 1876
The known facts
1871 census appears as soldier. 12th Lancers, East cavalry barracks, Aldershot. Census date 2 April although form revised 30 April 1871
Forces war records 1871 worldwide army index. Started 1 April complete 30 June 1871. Manchester recruiting depot district 7, Service number - unnumbered, location Manchester, rank recruit.
Forces war records 1871 worldwide army index. Started 1 April complete 30 June 1871. 12th (Prince of Wales Royal) Lancers, Regimental number 1215, location Aldershot, rank Private.
He was listed in the Police Gazette of 7 July 1875 as having deserted on 10 June 1875 when at Manchester, with 12th Lancers, Regimental number 1215.
Court martialed at Shorncliffe (Kent) on 9 December 1875 and was sentenced to 56 days hard labour for desertion.
On 15 April 1876 Pte. 1215 was discharged from 12th Lancers with a bad character following 4 years and 213 days service of which only 73 days counted towards pension.
Date calculations
56 days after 9 Dec 1875 is 3 Feb 1876
56 days before 15 April 1876 is 19 Feb 1876, or 129 days before 9 Dec 1875
4 years and 213 days before 15 April 1876 is 15 Sep 1871
4 years and 213 days before 9 Dec 1875 is 10 May 1871
4 years and 213 days before 10 Jun 1875 is 9 Nov 1870
Questions
How does length of sentence reconcile with court martial and discharge date?
What would be normal for start of sentence after court martial and end of sentence and discharge?
When does length of service end - on desertion, or on discharge?
Because of the 1871 census, 2GG was in army in April 1871 that would seem to make service end on desertion?
What causes pensionable days to be so different from service days?
Thanks for any help on this.
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I assume we are talking about Private Rowland White.
There two factors you need to consider when looking at a soldier's service. His reckonable service and his service commitment. His service commitment is the length of time he signed up for. The standard short service enlistment was for 7 years with the colours (active service) and 5 years in the Reserve. Reckonable service is not the same as a soldier's total length of service. Reckonable service would not start until he reached the age of 18. So if he joined as boy soldier (possibly as young as 14) he could have been included in the 1871 worldwide index but might not yet have reached 18. So ideally you need to know his date of birth to see if this is a factor to be taken into account.
From his reckonable service you need to deduct all the time he was absent without leave (ie from 10 June 1875 to whenever he was recaptured or returned voluntarily).
You also need to deduct any time in custody awaiting court martial and of course the sentence of 56 days.
By my reckoning that's 238 days to be deducted.
Furthermore the sentence of the Court Martial might also mean that he forfeited more days. For instance, if when he deserted, he threw away or abandoned his uniform and Army kit he would have been required to repay the value, but since he wouldn't be paid while he was in prison, and was to be discharged soon after completing his sentence, he might have had additional reckonable days deducted to compensate for this, so that he effectively lost pension rights instead.
And we don't know if he had other days deducted for earlier disciplinary offences.
However even taking all that into account, I cannot explain why he only had 73 days which counted towards a pension. (Update: see my next reply)
Neither can I explain why he remained in the Army until 15 April 1876 when he should have completed his sentence on 3 February 1876. Any soldier sentenced to hard labour (penal servitude) by a Court Martial was automatically to be discharged after serving his sentence, so the only thing I can think of to account for an extra 72 days before his actual discharge was that he was awarded extra days detention for misbehaviour while undergoing his sentence of hard labour. However it seems unlikely that he would have had his sentence more than doubled.
The 12th Lancers remained in the UK between 1870 and 1877 so we do not need to consider time spent travelling back to the UK from an overseas station, such as India.
I'm sorry that none of this completely answers your question. However 73 days would mean that he wasn't eligible for a pension.
Do you have the actual documents which give the various dates, calculations, length of service etc? If you do, it might help if you could post copies here just in case there's some other information which you may have missed. I've just found his Chelsea Hospital application on FindMyPast. The entry is shown below. It shows that he bought himself out by paying the sum of £30.
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Thinking about this a bit more, I think that his Court Martial sentence removed all his reckonable service up to that date (9 Dec 1875) but that somehow he escaped being discharged as part of the sentence. His sentence of 56 days took him up to 2 Feb 1876 (counting 9 Dec as the first day of his sentence). Having completed his sentence he returned to his unit and served on for another 73 days (2 Feb 1876 to 15 Apr 1876 -1876 was a leap year) until he bought himself out. It was just this final period after sentence which counted towards his pension. And as I mentioned earlier, that wouldn't have been sufficient to be granted a pension.
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If you wanted to try and flesh out Rowland's time in the 12th Lancers, the Regimental Pay and Muster rolls held by the National Archives provide monthly nominal rolls of all soldiers on the Regiment's strength and their rates of pay etc. Unfortunately the records before 1877 do not appear to have survived and those after that date haven't been digitised so you would need to visit TNA or arrange for a researcher to photograph the rolls for you. If you needed a researcher, he/she would need to look for and photograph entries which contained useful new information such as his rate of pay on the first date his name appears, the date he went absent, his court martial and the last few months of service to April 1886.
The rolls are contained in the following series:
WO 16/1234 for the period 1877 - 1879
WO 16/1235 for the period 1879 - 1886
(I've checked WO 16/1233 but it relates to another Regiment).
Also, if you can get to Derby Museum and Art Gallery (https://derbymuseums.org/collection/the-soldiers-story/), they hold some records relating to the 12th Lancers. You can see a complete list of their holdings here (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/download/GB1609%20912L), although it would appear that only 912L : 2088/5 12th Lancers Order Book 1815 -1872, and 912L : 2089/30 12th Lancers registry of services 1715-1876 are likely to be relevant. The order book should contain details of disciplinary matters, although clearly the dates don't include the period of his absence, so his name probably won't appear. I have no idea what the Registry of Services might contain. I would like to think it might include the enlistment details for all soldiers but I can't guarantee that will be the case.
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Thank you Andy j2022 for a thorough response
Yes you are correct my 2GG is Rowland White and he was born 20 Oct 1851 so I presume no child soldier calculation needed.
I had the pension calculation record but had not appreciated it did show a purchase to buy out.
I wonder how he came by that amount I assume that 30 pounds was deducted from final pay?
I am in New Zealand so visit to UK archives is not possible.
As with most things in genealogical research we do go down rabbit holes at times and this was one of mine. I actually cannot find my 2GG's death record and while searching for that have re focused on every event in his early life. His last appearance was in the 1881 census in Manchester, and he has a few events post military service events in Manchester, so the military events needed to be re verified. The area of Manchester was Hulme in which there was a cavalry barracks (12th Lancers stationed there)
The only two things left in the military events is to confirm his enlistment date and to verify the first forces war record Rowland is my Rowland. These are related but need to be reconciled with the known census record that puts him in Aldershot sometime between 2 April and 30 April 1871.
My final question would be your best estimate of that enlistment date.
To reconcile the facts of the 1871 worldwide army index assuming both records relate to my Rowland and the census definitely does then the enlistment date needs to be early April 1871
(how long would a recruit be labelled a recruit until he became a private in the regiment?)
Thanks again for all your efforts.
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As you indicate, £30 was an enormous amount of money for a private soldier, representing around two years pay after stoppages. A private in 1871 would get 1 shilling a day but from this he have deducted various small amounts to cover his food and things like barrack damages. If he kept out of trouble for two years he might earn an extra 1 penny (1d) per day as good conduct pay, rising to 2d after 5 years of good conduct ( I don't think he would have reached the 5 year point for good conduct!). By 1881 the basic pay had risen to 1/1d and good conduct pay remained the same. There was a system in which a small amount of his pay was withheld and kept as compulsory savings for when he left the Army. These savings did not earn interest but were intended to act as buffer against initially being unemployed once he left the Army. As Rowland was in the Army for perhaps 5-6 years he might have accumulated around £5 in savings through this compulsory scheme, but obviously during his absence and his period in prison he wouldn't have been paid at all.
I think it is more likely that his family would have had to find the money to buy him out.
The 1871 Army Worldwide Index was not a census taken at the time. It is based on research done by Roger Nixon using the Pay Musters held by TNA which I mentioned earlier. You can find more information on this Index here on FindMyPast (https://www.findmypast.co.uk/articles/further-information-on-the-1871-worldwide-british-army-index) (no subscription required). A shorter but similar description appears on Forces War Records (https://uk.forceswarrecords.com/publication/1345/uk-worldwide-army-index-1871/description). There are similar Indexes for 1841, 1851 and 1861.
As for establishing when Rowland enlisted, the best source would have been the pay and muster rolls for that period (say around 1869-1871), but as I mentioned I couldn't find the relevant muster rolls. However having done a new search I think they may have been listed under the 12th Dragoons (the 12th Lancers were previously known as the 12th Light Dragoons). If I am right then the relevant muster rolls are:
WO12/1076 for the years 1868-69
WO12/1077 for the years 1869-70
WO12/1078 for the years 1870-71
WO12/1078 for the years 1871-72
I appreciate that these references may be academic for you if you can't get to TNA at Kew, but may be helpful if you either hire a researcher or ask the TNA to carry out the research on your behalf. In much the same vein here is a reference to another series which may or may not be useful. It is for the so-called description books of the Cavalry Depot for the year 1870: WO 25/3892 (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4400755). Again not digitised unfortunately, but if Rowland had enlisted in 1870 and he went to the Depot for his training, he is quite likely to be listed in the description books at the Depot. I believe the Cavalry Depot (for Lancers and Hussars) was then at Canterbury in Kent. However it is possible that in about 1870 all recruit training for the 12th Lancers was being carried out within the Regiment. Recruit training consisted of two parts: basic soldiering in which the man was taught foot drill and how to shoot, and continuation training in which he learnt to ride and how to look after his horse etc. I am not sure how long he would have been classed as recruit but it was possibly a minimum of two months.
The two entries for a Rowland White in the 1871 Worldwide Index is interesting. Knowing how the Index was compiled, double counting is certainly possible, but as Roger Nixon explains, some data was taken from musters as late as December 1871, so it may not help to pinpoint the exact date of his enlistment. Seeing images of the two entries on the actual muster rolls at TNA might help to clarify if the unnumbered recruit was the same person as the one who was (presumably later) located at Aldershot. Incidentally, the 12th Lancers had been located in Aldershot from at least September 1870 (I haven't checked any further back).
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I think I can narrow down Rowland's enlistment date to between 14 Jan 1871 to 7 Feb 1871. This is based on his number 1215. Numbers were issued sequentially within a Regimental allocation. From other surviving records it's possible to know that Pte George Golding (born 1852) enlisted on 14 January 1871 into the 12th Lancers and was given the number 1207. On 7 February 1871 Pte George Clarke (born 1851) enlisted in the 12th Lancers and was given the number 1225.
This suggests that Rowland enlisted in the last two weeks of January 1871.
George Golding's record is also interesting for two other reasons. He was absent without leave between 27 March and 5 April 1875. He was sentenced to 28 days detention and soldiered on, eventually becoming a Lance Corporal and being discharged on 27 Feb 1878 as no longer fit for service. On discharge his deferred pay (the scheme I mentioned earlier) amounted to £9 14s 10d. It seems that I was wrong that the deferred pay did not earn interest as this amount is described as 'Deferred pay + interest'. If you have a subscription to FindMyPast, you can see his record here (https://www.findmypast.co.uk/transcript?id=GBM/WO97/1735/343084)
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Hi Andy and thanks again for all your effort on this
So based on the assumption that 4 years and 213 days is calculated up to 10 Apr 1876 and that anytime between his desertion and completion of sentence is not included in that calculation then enlistment would have been on 21 January 1871 (fits with your regimental number allocation sequence.)
How did I get that, my calculation would be 4 years and 213 days less 73 we know about post sentence serving so enlistment would be 4 years and 140 days (213-73) before 10 June desertion date. This is 21 Jan 1871. But for me late January 1871 is close enough.
Looking again at the pension record where 30 pound seems to be a common buy out amount and as you calculated Rowlands's deferred pay would be not cover it. How Rowland came by that amount on 15 Apr 1876 will be another mystery maybe to return to later.
That closes the topic for me and thanks again for your help.
Tony