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Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

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VALLMO9
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Re: Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

Post by VALLMO9 »

Army pension calculations were based on length of service, nature of wounds (if any), degree of disability (if any), and service locations.

As regards his own pension payments, rate per day, and period of payments, they might be listed in the Royal Hospital Chelsea: Returns of Payment of Army and Other Pensions 1842-1883 (WO 22) series at TNA.

I note that James is living in Manchester (1851) then Salford (1861). So a quick check of TNA's WO 22 catalogue indicates the following:

WO 22/68 1854-1861 - Manchester 1st
WO 22/69 1842-1852 - Manchester 1st
WO 22/70 1842-1852 - Manchester 2nd
WO 22/71 1852-1862 - Manchester 2nd

Unfortunately, these records have not been digitised. So they need to be viewed at TNA at Kew.

Additionally, Fold3 have two records for James Hunt in the collections below, but I doubt they contain pension payment details. The Kilmainham series indicate his Pension Admission Date: Dec 1846; Pension Admission Place: Dublin, Leinster, Ireland.

Ireland, Royal Hospital Kilmainham Pensioner Discharge Documents, 1724-1924
UK, Royal Hospital Chelsea Pensioner Soldier Service Records, 1760-1920
Thunder
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Re: Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

Post by Thunder »

The payments were I believe made quarterly as the Army have quarterly records working in quarters of the year starting on Christmas Day each year.
jonwarrn
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Re: Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

Post by jonwarrn »

Ancestry has UK, Royal Hospital, Chelsea: Regimental Registers of Pensioners, 1713-1882
Regimental Registers of Pensioners
7th Regiment of Foot
Jas Hunt
Is Rate a ditto from 1.0 ? Is that 1 shilling, or perhaps £1 if paid quarterly? Help!
Date of admission a ditto for 8 Dec 46
District is 1 Manchester
died 5.9.65
Some more figures in the next column, like a calculation?

TNA ref WO 120 / 55
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov. ... r/C1923413
jonwarrn
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Re: Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

Post by jonwarrn »

jonwarrn wrote: 31 Oct 2020, 22:10 died 5.9.65
Maybe
HUNT, JAMES
Age at Death (in years): 57
GRO Reference: 1865 S Quarter in SALFORD Volume 08D Page 83
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AdrianBruce
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Location: South Cheshire

Re: Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

Post by AdrianBruce »

The late, lamented Victorian Wars Forum was good for this sort of thing.... I did save a few posts in OneNote and the relevant bits might include...
Permanent long service pensions were awarded to every soldier who had completed the maximum period of service with the colours. The size of the pension varied with the length of service over twenty one years and with the soldier’s rank. As was the case with disability pensions, service pensions were often inadequate. Normal rates started at 8d to 1s 6d per day for a private and ran to as high as 3s per day for a top sergeant. ... Service towards pensions was lost by desertion, fraudulent enlistment, a court martial conviction, or forfeiture of pay due to imprisonment.

For the most part, pensions were paid quarterly in advance, a practice which, by placing a large sum of money in the hands of those unused to having more than a few shillings at once, encouraged the intemperate to waste their allowances. There were also provisions for pensions to be commuted for a lump sum and these were frequently taken advantage of. ...

The pensions paid to police constables and to private soldiers were frequently compared between 1856 and 1899. ….. To take but one example, the police constable and the infantry private discharged after the maximum period of service [being twenty five years for police] would each receive a permanent pension. The constable’s might amount to 20s per week, but the soldier’s would be no more than half this amount.

The insufficiency of army pensions, both in terms of the number and size of the allowance awarded each year is nowhere better demonstrated than by the number of ex soldiers reduced to destitution and to dependence on civilian institutions yearly. If a pensioner had to be lodged in an asylum for the mentally ill, the War office undertook to pay the guardians of the institution 4s for his maintenance, yet deducted the amount from his pension, leaving in some cases only a few pence for the support of the man’s wife and family.”
Citing Skelley, AR, The Victorian Army at Home, Montreal, McGill Queens University Press, 1977, pp 205 – 211
Post by member "Peter" in 2011.
Adrian Bruce
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AdrianBruce
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Re: Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

Post by AdrianBruce »

jonwarrn wrote: 31 Oct 2020, 22:10...
Jas Hunt
Is Rate a ditto from 1.0 ? Is that 1 shilling, or perhaps £1 if paid quarterly? Help!
...
The ditto is indeed carried down from "1.0", I believe. If you look at other values in that column, you see things like "1.5½" - this makes sense if read as 1 shilling 5½ pence, but no sense if you try to read it as £.

The opposite column also seems to have a "9d" at the top - the "d" is a curly superscript - so 9 pence. Those values seen to roughly, vaguely, approximately, match those I quote for daily pension rates above.

What the 10996/73 means, I have no idea!!!
Adrian Bruce
jonwarrn
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Re: Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

Post by jonwarrn »

Thanks, Adrian.
Sorry to hear about the Victorian Wars Forum.
Jon
VALLMO9
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Re: Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

Post by VALLMO9 »

jonwarrn wrote: 31 Oct 2020, 22:10 Ancestry has UK, Royal Hospital, Chelsea: Regimental Registers of Pensioners, 1713-1882
Regimental Registers of Pensioners
7th Regiment of Foot
Jas Hunt
Oops, I missed that one (probably due to the fact my Ancestry searching just used his service number 415 and surname). :oops:

I'd read that "Originally out-pensions were paid annually in arrear, but since 1755 they have been paid in advance; at first half-yearly; from 1812 quarterly; from 1842 quarterly, monthly or weekly as desired; and from 1877 quarterly".

Not sure if it helps, but the "Parliamentary Papers: 1780-1849, Vol 44" are online in Google books. Page 69 discusses the Royal Warrants of 21 July 1817 and 29 June 1822. This page relates to the duties of excise for paying out-pensioners belonging to the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, etc.
VALLMO9
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Re: Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

Post by VALLMO9 »

Thepastisyourself wrote: 01 Nov 2020, 15:16 I noted that he was paid a £3 bounty on signing up, that he was read the very brutal Articles of War when attesting.
Often the new recruit's enlistment bounty payment had to be used to purchase his uniform and initial equipment. So kind of a Catch-22 situation.
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AdrianBruce
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Re: Chelsea Pensioner's Pay

Post by AdrianBruce »

Yes, Ireland was very definitely "Home Service" from 1801 to 1922, as it was all the United Kingdom. It does catch a few people out...

Whether it counted as Home Service before the 1801 Act of Union, I've no idea - I don't remember seeing that level of detail in earlier papers.

(Another Ireland related oddity is that, if you go back far enough, you see Chelsea Pensioners and Kilmainham Pensioners - Kilmainham is in Ireland, of course, and served the same function as Chelsea did, but for Irish Pensioners. Except... The Irish Pensioners could be born, bred and now resident in England, Wales & Scotland - it was the regiments that were Irish, i.e. paid for from the Dublin funds, and those regiments might recruit all over the British Isles. So strictly, Kilmainham administered pensions for Irish regiments, not Irish ex-soldiers.)
Adrian Bruce
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