Family Historians Must Be Heard
The plan to digitise wills and probate documents then destroy the originals, as mentioned in the ‘News’ section of the February issue, has rightly provoked outrage. However, it is surely part of a bigger debate about which records we preserve.
I recently did two pieces of research around exhumation; I knew that the Home Office closely regulates exhumations, and I expected to find detailed records. The first piece of research was on German servicemen, mainly airmen and sailors, who either died in Britain or whose remains were washed up on our shores. During the war these men were buried in local churchyards across the country. However, in 1959 a German war cemetery was established in Cannock Chase, Staffordshire, under a treaty between the then federal government of Germany and the UK government, and nearly all of the remains were exhumed and reburied there. I was expecting to find a large file relating to the exhumations, but there isn’t one.
My other piece of research was on Count Michael Károlyi, who led the First Hungarian Republic from 1918 to 1919. He was active in Hungarian politics all his life, mainly in exile, and died in 1955. He was buried with his son Ádám, who had died in a plane crash on the Isle of Wight shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, in St Andrew’s Church, Chale, Isle of Wight. In 1962 both father and son were exhumed and their remains taken to Hungary. In this case, The National Archives at Kew holds a comprehensive file at HO 282/44. Looking at files in this series it becomes obvious that only those of the famous and notorious have been kept. There are, for instance, files on Lady Cynthia Mosley, Derek Bentley, James Hanratty, Timothy Evans and William Joyce, but none relating to ‘ordinary’ folk.
Obviously not every record ever created can be preserved – think of the number that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions must create – but somehow family historians need to find a permanent place at the table when these decisions are made.
Tony Bevis, by email
EDITOR REPLIES This is a very important point you bring up, Tony. It’s vital that family historians are considered when these decisions are made.
WORKHOUSE HERO
Thank you so much for Peter Higginbotham’s feature on workhouse records in the February issue, which may help to provide some hitherto elusive details ab
