England Military and Service Occupations (National Institute)

Introduction
Family history is more than just collecting names, dates and places. In their efforts to recreate the lives of their ancestors diligent researchers will endeavour to find details about home, schooling, work and community. They will search for pictures of people, places and events connected to the family to give visual impact to the history. The family historian can also discover much about the occupations of these ancestors.

University libraries and larger public libraries, especially those with a good genealogy section, hold many items of interest for the family historian with ancestors in the services, and those with army and navy relatives should not ignore military and naval college libraries.

The researcher should consult Gibson and Hampson’s Specialist Indexes for Family Historians (2000) for the availability of many kinds of indexes relevant to the services described herein. A number of facsimile reproductions of books on services and lists of officers are available in hard copy, CD-ROM and on fiche. A comprehensive listing of those on fiche and as books is given by Raymond’s two 1999 volumes and prices compare very favourably with the secondhand value of these limited edition original volumes. Raymond’s Occupational Sources for Genealogists: A Bibliography should be consulted for further sources.

Many of the basic sources for family history such as civil registration, censuses, parish registers and wills will mention the occupations followed by your ancestors. The following gives an introduction to the records available regarding the nature of the various services as well as to those containing particulars of the actual men and women engaged therein.

Description of "Services"
The category “Services” include:


 * Defence Services—Army
 * Army History
 * Royal Marines and Militia
 * East India Company and Colonial Regiments
 * Royal Air Force and Royal Navy.
 * Water Transport Services—Merchant Marine, and Inland Waterways.
 * Communication Services—Road Transportation, Railways and Post Office
 * Law and Order, Fire and Rescue Services-Police, Fire Service, Customs, Excise and Coastguards, Lifeboats and Lighthouses.

These divisions should not be allowed to obscure the fact that there are obvious connections and overlaps between the different services. Please note that the apprenticeship programme, as well as guilds and trade companies also operated within many of the services. Similarly office holders, whether in professional capacities or in services such as the East India Company or Customs and Excise, were required to take the test of allegiance to the crown and proof of attending sacrament in the Church of England required by the Test Act of 1672. This was designed to exclude from public office all Roman Catholics (until 1828) and Jews (until 1860) (Camp 1999-1).

Many people switched from one service to another in search of work, particularly between those that required similar training and experience. This is important to remember when the trail goes cold in one line of work—could he have found a job in a similar service?

Researchers are cautioned that it was not at all unusual for men to boost their rank or official status to prospective brides and in-laws, newspaper reporters or to anyone else they wished to impress.

Thus a family story of a major in the Charge of the Light Brigade grew out of a sergeant major in the Crimean War; a letter carrier may have become a postmaster on his marriage certificate; whilst a ship’s mate preferred to call himself a captain when regaling his grandchildren with his exploits. The diligent researcher will search out the true facts. Some recommended general works on occupational costume are those by Lansdell (Occupational Costume and Working Clothes 1776-1976), Rowland-Warne (Costume), and Williams-Mitchell (Dressed for the Job. The story of occupational costume).

Defense Services
The defense of the country was carried out by the Military, that is the regular, permanent armed forces (army, navy, air force, royal marines, etc.) and this included duties abroad. There was also a temporary force called the Militia, called upon especially in times of national emergency when the regular army was needed abroad. This militia existed from Saxon times when any able-bodied man between 16 and 60 could be called upon for military service within his county, occasionally elsewhere in Britain, but not abroad. The chart below outlines the main components of the defensive system, although this is very simplistic and of course changed over the course of history.

CHART: The Defence of the Country

General Military Records
There are a few records which span many military services, one of the most important for the family historian would be the index of Military Courts 1879-1994 which was reviewed by Probert (Family Tree Magazine. Vol 17 #12, page 40), and covers:

There is much of value in the new leaflets obtainable on The National Archives (TNA) website, and the list at the time of writing is given under Further Reading; new ones are added frequently. Those concerned with operations rather than personnel are M8, M11, M21, M23, M24, M25, M28, M32, M33, M35, M36, M41, M54, M66, M68, M69, and M70. Another fascinating lucky dip is Military and Mariner Miscellanea by Ross and Ross 1991 on 129.

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Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online courses English: Occupation Records-Professions and Trades and English: Occupations-Military and Services offered by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

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