Chelsea Pensioners' records

[Stuart]

I've also puzzled over the administrative details implied by the records of out-pensions found in the Chelsea lists, like Peter in the mid-December newsletter.

They must have received their money from a pay office, and I think these were part of the army's territorial structure. I presume this would also deal with reserves, recruitment, and other interactions with the home population (e.g. billeting and transport).

I have a record with a column headed "district 1865", in which are entries such as:
1 No London
2 West London
1 Belfast
2 Plymouth
1 East London
1 E[squiggle] London

From that I conclude that the numbers are for places with more than one district office, and abbreviating East London to 1 E and L each with a vague squiggle after it produces what is in Peter's example.

 

[Stuart]

I've never found a guide to the meaning of these pension records. One thing I was puzzled about in the list I quoted is that these pensions have a fixed term of two years or less (though some have no duration entered). I asked an expert I found at an FH fair about that, and he didn't know either. It makes the pension look more like a grant for resettlement back in civilian life, even for someone who was assessed as disabled.

For example, poor old private Walter Davey - for whom I have the discharge board papers as well as the payment ledger - was assessed thus (his primary affliction was scrofula):

He is at present totally unfit for military service. His disability will interfere materially with his capability of earning a livelihood. It has to a certain extent been aggravated by venereal disease.

He got 7d a day for 21 months - but I don't know what happened to him after discharge.

On rates of payment, having checked up on service pay, that was 12d a day for a private in 1800 and still only 14d in 1914. Pay rates and service were always reckoned per day. Half the pensions on that list were 6d, 7d, or 8d, which sounds about right per day. The rest were higher, which would be for those of higher rank when discharged, I think.

 

[At home in NZ]

They must have received their money from a pay office, and I think these were part of the army's territorial structure. I presume this would also deal with reserves, recruitment, and other interactions with the home population (e.g. billeting and transport).

there is a Chelsea Pensioners website. As yet I haven't looked beyond the first page where it explains where they were /are paid from and where records can be found.

 

[peter]

Apparently the squiggle against my ancestor indicates that his pension was paid in London by the 1st East District. He was promoted to Sergeant at some point, so received a pension of 1s a day.

He died on 1st January 1848 which was the year that the Military General Service Medal was belatedly awarded to surviving veterans - in his case for fighting at 8 of the battles in the Peninsular Wars. Supposedly the next of kin could claim the medal of someone who died after applying, but whether that happened is unknown, and possibly unknowable - his wife died later the same year, and his son (my 3G grandfather) died in 1849 having lost his wife (my 3G grandmother) in 1847. At some point between then and the 1851 Census my 2G grandmother and her siblings went into the workhouse.