Lists of the Home Establishment

Numbers IOR/L/AG/30/1, 13, 29 and 32 not used.

Unrestricted

The Minutes of the Court of Directors of the East India Company contain entries relating to the appointment, etc., of individual members of the staff both at home and overseas from 1600 to 1858. From about 1660 to about 1717, lists of the home staff, who were confirmed annually in their appointments are also included. There are lists of home staff at various dates between 1710 and 1793 in Home Miscellaneous Volume 67 [see H/67, pp 1-163]. A list of staff in 1785 arranged by Departments and with a statement of the duties of each Department, is in Volume 362 [see H/362, pp 9-77] of the same series. Salary lists from 1760, arranged by Departments or appointments, are listed in L/AG/19. The India Office Library has statements of the duties of Assistant Elders in the Warehouse between 1815 and 1820 [see MSS EUR E283]. Unestablished extra clerks and writers were first employed in 1766. Some of those were eventually promoted into the established grades, but even if not established, they were usually awarded pension on retirement after long service. In connection with the award of pension, it is interesting to record that by a very long standing practice of the Company, members of the home established staff who retired after fifty years service and had reached the age of sixty-five years, were awarded pension equal to full pay. That practice followed one of excusing a member who had rendered long service and was permanently incapacitated from further attendance at the office while continuing to issue his full salary. Up to 1860, lists of established lower grades of home staff, including the staffs of warehouses, (but excluding labourers) are usually to be found in the lists of senior staff. Until 1858, all staff were appointed after nomination by either one of the Directors of the Company or by the President of the Board of Control. Thereafter, all appointments to the established staff were made, usually as the result of an examination, by the Civil Service Commissioners. Establishment matters in the Company which affected the home staff were the responsibility of one of the Committees, which made its recommendations to the Court of Directors. From 1709-1834, it was the Committee of Correspondence (although, so far as the staff of the Accountant General's Department was concerned, it appears to have been the Committee of Accounts). From April 1834, the Finance and Home Committee dealt with all the questions of the Home Establishment. From at least as early as 1834, and up to 1920, the Accountant General acted as an Establishment Officer, or as a channel through which establishment matters were brought to the notice of the Committees or the Permanent Under Secretary of State. From 1921, the main records concerning the home establishment (including the records of the Establishment Officer up to 1924) are with the records of the Services and General Department (L/S & G). But certain information was still kept by the Salaries Section of the Accountant General's Department and it is recorded in L/AG/29/3. Information in the following volumes supplement that in the sources referred to above. Records relating to the staff of the Board of Control will be found listed in L/AG/43.