Army Pay 1914

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Historic Records bargain of the week has to be the HMSO "Royal Warrant for the pay, appointment, promotion and non-effective pay of the [British] Army" for 1914, won with a snipe on a well-known online auction site for the bargain price of 99 pence. 

My copy is the re-printed version of 1919 and, as an added bonus, also includes Army Order 432 for October 1921 which deals with retired pay, pensions, and non-effective gratuities. The Pay Warrant covers every aspect of army pay that you could possibly wish to find and runs to over 300 pages with a comprehensive index. However, for the purpose of this post I'm going to quote from Army Order 432, issued close to three years after the Armistice had been signed, and with the British government paying a fortune to disabled ex-servicemen, widows and orphaned children. 

I've been collecting books for over 40 years, and I don't recall ever coming across this particular volume before. Either it's uncommon or I've had my eyes half shut. The Internet Archive has a copy of the Royal Warrant for 1899 which will give you a flavour of the Army Pay 1914 version, and I may well digitise my copy in future.


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