Royal Hospital, Chelsea: Discharge Documents of Pensioners

These records contain certificates of service of pensioners of the Royal Hospital Chelsea similar to the discharge documents in WO 97. This series also includes general discharge registers for the period 1871 to 1884 and registers and nominal rolls of men discharged without pension for the period 1884 to 1887.

In WO 121/1-136 each item record relates to an individual soldier and records their name, any alias names, their place and county of birth (as recorded in the document and thus often mispelt), their regiment(s), their age on discharge and the length of their service. Covering dates give the soldier's year of discharge unless otherwise stated.

Electronic images of these records can be searched online through our partner website.

The certificates of service are arranged chronologically according to the date the pension was awarded. New data to describe these records has been created by the Friends of The National Archives. Consequently each piece in the range WO 121/1-136 has a number of item records associated with it. Each item record relates to an individual soldier.

Records in the range WO 121/1-136 are arranged by date and not by surname.

The Friends of The National Archives will continue to describe this material from piece WO 121/137 onwards and the resulting data will be uploaded into the system over the next few years.

Please note that the last number of the item reference for an individual soldier (e.g. 89 in WO121/1/89) does not refer to any numbering on the original document. Each soldier was given a number in cataloguing, but the actual papers are numbered sheet by sheet.

The best way to navigate round the film is to take the last number of the item reference (e.g. 89 in WO121/1/89) and multiply it by 2 (because each soldier has a minimum 2 sheets of paper relating to him). Wind forward to that doubled number on the film, and start looking for your man from there. You will not be in exactly the right place, because some sets of papers have 3 or 4 sheets, but you will be in the right area of the film.

For earlier registers of which the general discharge registers, 1871 to 1884, are a continuation see pieces 3845-3893 in:

Topics

Army

Pay and pensions

Armed Forces (General Administration)