Charity Commission: War Charities: Binders of Basic Information

CHAR 4

1916-1951

This series contains a record of charities set up specifically for helping participants and victims of the First World War. It contains information on charities registered, refused registration or exempt from registration under the War Charities Act 1916, including the name, location and purpose of each charity and the names of committee members.

Alphabetically by county.

A few specimens of war charities case files are in CHAR 7

Public Record(s)

English

24 files and volumes

Charity Commission

Topics

Charities

Conflict

Operations, battles and campaigns

The War Charities Act 1916 prohibited the raising of money for war charities unless registered. The act defined war charities as any fund, institution or association (whether established before or after the 1916 Act) whose charitable object was connected with the First World War, but not where such object was subsidary to the principal purposes of the charity. The purposes in many cases were very specific and most of these charities had a short lifespan.

Applications for registration or exemption had to be sent to the registration authority for the area in which the administrative centre of the charity was situated.

Following the 1916 Act the Charity Commission kept a combined register of all charities who under the act were registered, a list of all charities whose applications for registration under the act were refused, and a list of charities exempted from registration under the act.