Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919
Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919About the data What is the source of the information? Which parts of the British Army are covered? Understanding the results fields What is the source of information?
"Soldiers Died"
"Officers Died"
Which parts of the British Army are covered?
Understanding the results fields
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- As always with database searching, less is more: begin by entering limited information and then, if necessary, refine your search by adding extra information.
Using the place field (birthplace and residence)
- These have been transcribed exactly as is, without correction. This means that the omissions and errors in the originals have been preserved and also appear online.
- Residence was given in most but not all of the original returns from the regiments. When no residence was given in the original, no data is given here.
- Place fields are not standardised. This means that, for example, the community of Govan appears variously as:
- "Govan"
- "Govan, Glasgow"
- "Govan, Glasgow, Lanarks"
- "Govan, Lanark"
- "Govan, Lanarks"
- "Govan, Lanarkshire"
- County names (as at the time of the Great War) may appear in one or more abbreviated forms. For example:
- Bedfordshire may appear as Bedford or Beds.
- Cheshire may appear as Ches.
- Middlesex often appears as Middx.
- Northumberland may appear as North"d.
- Shropshire may appear as Salop
- Wiltshire often appears as Wilts.
- The names of counties given are those in use at the time of the Great War.
- The place fields (birthplace and residence) may contain one, two or three terms
- The most common combination is town and county (or county equivalent): for example, "Cricklade, Wilts" or "Douglas, Isle of Man"
- It is common to come across town without county: for example, "Dublin"
- It is relatively unusual to come across county without town: for example, "Devon"
- In the case of large cities, the district or suburb may be given in combination with the name of the city but without the county: for example, "Ardwick, Manchester".
- Places in London are often given as a combination of district and postcode area, with or without the word London: for example: "Lewisham, S.E." and "London, E.C.". Where this is the case, the full stops are included (as was the custom in 1921 when the original materials were published) - for instance, "S.E." not "SE".
- Sometimes, a third term may be used, as in "Prittlewell, Southend, Essex" or "Whitechapel, London, E."
Within your search you can use asterisks (*) in place of any character or string of characters to widen your search. In some search fields we have included automatic wildcards to help your search, as detailed below.
- Surname There is no automatic wildcard for this field. In other words, if you search for Smith, you will not be returned entries for the surnames Sixsmith or Smithers. You can of course add your own leading (*smith) and/or trailing (Smith* or *smith*) wildcard, if you wish, so as to obtain these names. This can be useful when looking for hyphenated or unhyphenated double-barrelled surnames.
- Forename This has an automatic trailing wildcard. If, for example, you search for Walter, you will automatically receive all the entries under Walter, followed by those for Walter Albert, Walter Charles etc. You can of course add your own leading wildcard if you wish. For instance, if you were to search for "*Bert", you would received entries for men with the forenames Albert, Bert, Gilbert, Herbert, Hubert and Robert (and, because of the automatic trailing wildcard, you will also be returned any entries under Bertram).
- Birthplace This has automatic leading and trailing wildcards. For example, this means that if you type in "Dover", you will be returned results for plain "Dover", plus for "Buckland, Dover", "Dover, Kent" and "St Mary\"s, Dover, Kent".
- Residence This has automatic leading and trailing wildcards, and works as explained above.