Record revealed
Letters from the curator of St Vincent Botanic Gardens
Discover how plants travelled across the British Empire in the 19th century and the effect this has on our natural environment, and eating habits, today.
Series
Admiralty: Royal Marines: Attestation Forms
Catalogue reference: ADM 157
What's it about?
ADM 157
Attestations are the loose forms that a Marine completed on enlistment, attesting that he would serve wherever required. The forms gathered a considerable amount of personal information about the Marine, such as date and place of birth, age,...
Full description and record details
-
Reference (The unique identifier to the record described, used to order and refer to it)
- ADM 157
-
Title (The name of the record)
- Admiralty: Royal Marines: Attestation Forms
-
Date (When the record was created)
- 1790-1925
-
Description (What the record is about)
-
Attestations are the loose forms that a Marine completed on enlistment, attesting that he would serve wherever required. The forms gathered a considerable amount of personal information about the Marine, such as date and place of birth, age, trade and physical characteristics of each man on recruitment, details of his enlistment and attestation, sometimes even references to next-of-kin. The forms were annotated briefly with the details of his service career, such as the names of HM ships or stations on which he served and the dates of the service. Not all have survived, however, and the researcher's attention is directed to the accompanying index of contents which shows the surviving attestations.
-
Note (Additional information about the record)
- Catalogue entries for this series have been enhanced as part of a project supported by volunteers, completed in 2019. Some discharge papers and records unavailable for conservation reasons were not included in the project.
-
Arrangement (Information about the filing sequence or logical order of the record)
-
Arrangement
The forms are arranged alphabetically under year of attestation or discharge within each Division (Chatham, Plymouth, Portsmouth, and miscellaneous, i.e. those not allocated a service number).
Please note that individual pieces within this series are catalogued to item level, and that for these the item numbers equate to the original folio numbers in the document; therefore not all item numbers have been used for some pieces.
To find the Attestation of a Marine, the researcher will consult the lists for the Division in which he served; if that information is not known, then the researcher should consult the PRO guide book Royal Marines, for guidance.
-
Related material (A cross-reference to other related records)
-
Indexes for Royal Marines non-officers' attestation papers are in ADM 313
-
Held by (Who holds the record)
- The National Archives, Kew
-
Legal status (A note as to whether the record being described is a Public Record or not)
- Public Record(s)
-
Creator(s) (The creator of the record)
-
- Board of Admiralty, Royal Marines, Chatham Division, 1755-1947
- Board of Admiralty, Royal Marines, Plymouth Division, 1755-1947
- Board of Admiralty, Royal Marines, Portsmouth Division, 1755-1947
- Board of Admiralty, Royal Marines, Woolwich Division, 1805-1869
-
Physical description (The amount and form of the record)
- 3625 boxes, files and volumes
-
Subjects (Categories and themes found in our collection (our subject list is under development, and some records may have no subjects or fewer than expected))
-
Unpublished finding aids (A note of unpublished indexes, lists or guides to the record)
- There was a nominal card index to pieces ADM 157/1-664. This has been superseded by the Catalogue
-
Record URL
- https://beta.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/id/C1866/
Catalogue hierarchy
Over 27 million records
This record is held at The National Archives, Kew
2,473,747 records
Within the department: ADM
Records of the Admiralty, Naval Forces, Royal Marines, Coastguard, and related bodies
You are currently looking at the series: ADM 157
Admiralty: Royal Marines: Attestation Forms
You may be interested in
-
-
Focus on
The corsair state of Rabat-Salé
On the Atlantic coast of Morocco are two cities that became one of the most substantial Islamic ports of the 17th Century. -
Focus on
Blood in the Wear: The Sunderland Sailors' Strike and the North Sands Massacre of August 1825
Records of a coroner’s inquest on the body of the sailor Thomas Aird reveal details of a little-known seamen’s strike that was brutally suppressed.
Related records
Records that share similar topics with this record.