Stations of the British Army

[AdrianBruce]

I am indebted to Martin Briscoe of various Mailing Lists for this information.

Anyone who's ever tried to locate a regiment of the British Army in some arbitrary year should be grateful to know that various newspapers ran a feature "Stations of the British Army". If you go to your favourite newspaper search and look for that phrase, with luck you may find an article for your time period - or ones bracketing it.

I tried it on FindMyPast and got a fair selection of articles - I got back to the 1820s with the "Cumberland Pacquet, and Ware's Whitehaven Advertiser" (no I don't know what a "Pacquet" was...) while there were some in 1912 in the "War Office Times and Naval Review" when they seemed to do it monthly, there were only 4 or 5 in the previous 2 years, but that might be an indexing issue. I can't see any post-WW1 articles.

Formats vary - anyone wondering why regiments are listed non-alphabetically should realise they are in order of precedence, based on the original regimental numbers (e.g. the Cheshire Regiment was the 22nd).

Also, it seems to cover just cavalry regiments and infantry battalions so if you want artillery brigades, you're out of luck - in that case I'd have to revert to my previous method of looking in Army List.

[jonwarrn]

The 2nd Battalion, South Wales Borderers were in Jhansi, India in 1920/21. That's for sure.
And Chaubattia.
There's a multitude of ways of finding these things out.

[AdrianBruce]

Thanks Jon.

(That reply of Jon's didn't come out of the blue, if anyone wonders - rather it's a follow-up to a thread I started in Rootschat where I was trying to understand if I could pin down the military details of a relative of mine out in India in the 1921.)

[Jimbo50]

Whilst looking for a baptism of my Gt x 4 Grandmother in 1785 Portsmouth. A register from a Baptist church was a revelation. The ministers there recorded Father, Mother, Persons present, Date and Place of Birth (Transport Ship's name, and position, in some cases) Fathers rank, Regiment, and often details of what the regiment was engaged in. He also included, which I researched, and found to be current American War of Independence propoganda. He went as far as calling one father's senior officer a despot.(I hope none of them returned to read the entries as he would have been in serious trouble) . This is a prime example of my inability to keep track of anything, as I now can't find any of the really interesting register page copies that I downloaded.