On Thursday, 23 January, the Archives has announced that they are “making the digitized records the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal, which heard the cases of men seeking exemption from conscription into the army during the First World War, available online.”
The records of the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal include the
cases of over 8,000 individuals, as well as administrative papers reflecting
the changing policy towards conscription as the war progressed. “The records
reveal men seeking exemption on medical, family or economic grounds, as well as
the relatively small proportion wishing not to fight on moral grounds as
conscientious objectors.”
The Middlesex Appeal Tribunal was one of the county-level
appeal tribunals, part of a national system of tribunals that were established
across the UK to hear applications from men seeking exemption from military
service. The collection is one of two sets of appeal tribunal records
officially retained as a benchmark following the end of the war, and provides a
unique insight into the impact of the World War I on families, businesses and
communities far from the battlefields. (Emphasis by this blogger)
Local and county appeal tribunal records also survive in
many local archives, within personal and local government collections, and with
the Federation of Family History Societies, The National Archives has begun a
survey of surviving material in local collections.
Search the case papers through our First World
War 100 web portal at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war.
Contact The National Archives with questions relating to the project or the
records at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/contact/.
Questions might be ‘What is the second place for which the Archives retained records?’
and ‘If they anticipate putting those records online later, when will it be?’
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